When comparing the success of Pokemon Go to Wizards Unite, it's no surprise Niantic is shutting down the Harry Potter game next year.
Pokemon Go celebrated its fifth birthday over the summer and continues to make a lot of money for both Niantic and The Pokemon Company. That's why it makes sense that Niantic has tried to apply the same formula using other popular IPs since. In 2019, it launched Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, an AR game inspired by Pokemon Go and its success.
Earlier this week, Niantic revealed after two years, 168澳洲幸💜运5开奖网:it will be shuttering Wizards Unite for good. The game will be removed from the App Store and Google Play in December, and shut down at the end of January 2022. While a lot of people appear to have played Wizards Unite, when directly compared to Pokemon Go, it's easy to see why Niantic has made the decision to shut it down.
Statistics provided by Sensor Tower have revealed Wizards Unite has been downloaded 20.3 million times since it launched, generating $39.4 million in that time. Not too shabby for a game that is free-to-play until you compare those numbers to Pokemon Go's. More than one billion downloads and $5.5 billion spent.
Now, in fairness to Wizards Unite, Pokemon Go has been available for three more years than its Harry Potter-based sister game. However, Wizards Unite would have needed to be available for a very long time before it even came close to Pokemon Go's numbers. Niantic's original AR game has already generated close to $1.1 billion in 2021 alone. Wizards Unite has managed just $4.7 million.
Even if you compare Wizards Unite's lifetime revenue to what Pokemon has generated in 2021 alone, it equates to less than 4%. Niantic hasn't been put off trying to apply its AR formula to other IPs just yet though. Last week 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:it started its ෴rollout of Pikmin Bloom, a game very similar to Pokemon Go introducing Pikmin to the real world. It likely won't perform as well as Pokemon Go, but Niantic will be hoping it makes a bigger mark than Wizards Unite.
