John Hanke Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Monster Hunter Now, a mobile spin-off of the Capcom series, will be launching worldwide in September. Pre-registration is live now for iOS and Android devices with rewards once a certain number of sign-ups is surpassed.As an augmented reality (AR) game, Monster Hunter Now is comparable to Pokémon Go, and is in fact developed by Niantic too.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Augmented-reality games pioneer Niantic Labs is laying off 230 employees, about 25% of its workforce, and shutting down its Los Angeles studio as it refocuses on flagship title Pokémon Go. CEO John Hanke announced the cuts in a memo to staff Thursday, saying “we have allowed our expenses to grow faster than revenue” after the sales boom it saw during the COVID pandemic subsequently evaporated. As part of the reorg, Ninatic is “sunsetting” NBA All-World and stopping production on Marvel: World of Heroes games. “Post Covid, our revenue returned to pre-Covid levels and new projects in games and platform have not delivered revenues commensurate with those investments,” Hanke said in the memo, which Niantic released publicly.

Pokémon Go became a global sensation, with players collectively walking 8.7 million kilometres in its first year alone. Niantic, the company behind the mobile game, has since struggled to find another game as successful, and has now made the decision to cancel four projects which will cut around 85 to 90 jobs.Niantic Chief Executive Officer John Hanke reportedly wrote in an email to staff (via, Bloomberg) that the company was “facing a time of economic turmoil” and that it was already “reducing costs in a variety of areas”.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorNiantic, the augmented-reality games company behind “Pokémon Go,” is letting go about 8% of its workforce and has scrapped several game titles it had in development, including “Transformers: Heavy Metal.”The company is laying off 85-90 employees, Niantic CEO John Hanke said in a memo to staff Wednesday, which was first reported by Bloomberg. Niantic needs to “further streamline our operations in order to best position the company to weather any economic storms that may lie ahead,” Hanke wrote.In a statement, a Niantic spokesperson said, “We recently decided to stop production on some projects and reduce our workforce by about 8% to focus on our key priorities.

Niantic has revealed that it has raised roughly £225million ($300million USD) from Coatue, which has raised the company value to roughly £6.73billion ($9billion USD).The Pokemon Go developer has previously come out against the idea of the metaverse, with founder and CEO John Hanke saying it was a “dystopian nightmare” in August.“At Niantic, we believe humans are the happiest when their virtual world leads them to a physical one,” Hanke said in the recent post.

Transformers: Heavy Metal, a new augmented reality game developed by Seattle-based Very Very Spaceship.Using Niantic’s augmented reality toolset Lightship, Transformers: Heavy Metal is set to be soft-launched in various regions before a worldwide release later this year.Talking with Bloomberg, Niantic CEO John Hanke said that “for us, giant robots walking around the real world is just too good to pass up.”“This isn’t battle on a distant planet in a galaxy far, far away,” Hanke continued.