Niantic, the company behind the mega-hit Pokémon GO, has reached an inflection point.
Whether due to pandemic fatigue or frustration with the limitations of today’s AR technology.
The Google-backed startup has been pushing hard to replicate the success of GO, which became one of the fastest-growing games in history shortly after its launch in July 2016.
Niantic shut down Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, its the first high-profile post-GO title, just two years after its debut.
Flagship
Another flagship project – Pikmin Bloom – generated only a fraction of the downloads that GO achieved in the same time frame.
Last June, Niantic laid off 8% of its workforce — about 85 to 90 people — and canceled four of its projects, including Transformers, which had already entered beta testing.
Needless to say, there’s a lot going on in NBA All-World, Niantic’s latest attempt to recapture iOS and Android virality.
Revealed last summer in a joint announcement with the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association.
All-World — which is visually quite similar to GO — is packed with merchandise, nods to basketball culture, mini-games and the chance to meet real-life NBA avatars.
Players like Jordan Poole, Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins.
Demograhic
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the main demographic of the entire world. The only team I’ve ever followed is the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Simply because I grew up near Cleveland (and well, LeBron’s stardom didn’t hurt me).
Since I’m not much of a sports guy—my preferred type of play involves controllers and screens—I didn’t give All-World much thought until Darrell Etherington, managing editor of TechCrunch, commissioned me to write a first impressions article.
So I went blindly into my All-World demo, which took place on a gray and dreary, rainy afternoon at The Compound near Red Hook, Brooklyn.
The Compound, I was informed by the PR people who arranged the affair, was founded by hip-hop DJ Set Free Richardson of AND1 fame. Elegant.
In any case, the loft space was nicely furnished, with checkerboard patterned carpets, Picasso-esque prints and a pool table ready to play.
But I wasn’t there for the pool. When I arrived and poured myself a cup of coffee.
I plopped down on a thick leather couch next to Glenn Chin, Niantic’s Head of Global Marketing, and Marcus Matthews, Lead Producer for All-World, for my daily world walk. before its release in Play Store and App Store.
I started with an obvious question: why basketball for Niantic? Why did the studio choose this sport for their next AR venture?
Chin bluntly replied that it was much easier to enter into licensing agreements with an international organization such as the NBA than, for example, with disparate soccer confederations.
But he and Matthews — who grew up playing basketball in Downtown Jacksonville, Fla. — also repeatedly emphasized the social aspect of basketball, especially in towns with public courts, where kids and teenagers (I’m told) gather to casually shoot each other.
Sources: Techcrunch