© Niantic
Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Pokémon Go mobile game developer Niantic Inc. is in talks to sell its video game business to Scopely, a Saudi Arabia-owned mobile game developer and publisher, according to “several people familiar with the discussions.”
According to Bloomberg’s sources, the price being discussed is about US$3.5 billion, and a deal could be announced in the coming weeks — but Bloomberg added that there is no assurance that an agreement will be reached. Any agreement will include the Pokémon Go game and Niantic‘s other mobile games.
Niantic and The Pokémon Company International launched the Pokémon GO app in select countries including the United States in July 2016. Niantic also developed Pikmin Bloom, an AR app based on Nintendo‘s Pikmin franchise, which debuted in 2021.
Niantic‘s Ingress AR app inspired an anime adaptation that premiered in October 2018. Netflix began streaming the anime worldwide in April 2019.
Niantic most recently developed Monster Hunter Now, a new augmented reality (AR) smartphone game in CAPCOM‘s Monster Hunter game series, which launched in September 2023.
Savvy Games Group, a subsidiary of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF, which is chaired by the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman), acquired Scopely for US$4.9 billion in 2023. Savvy Games Group and Niantic already signed a Memorandum of Understanding in August, to help Niantic expand in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt. PIF also has investments in Toei, Nintendo, and other Japanese companies.
The separate Mohammed bin Salman Foundation, founded by Mohammed, owns the Saudi studio Manga Productions and 96.18% of the Japanese game developer SNK.
In February 2021, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence assessed that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi was a Saudi journalist who relocated to the United States and wrote for The Washington Post newspaper before being killed in 2018. The Saudi Arabian government “completely reject[ed]” the U.S. assessment. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has also been criticized for pursuing a war in Yemen that caused a humanitarian disaster and for cracking down on dissenting voices. He has alternately been praised for ending a ban on women drivers in 2018.
Sources: Bloomberg (Michelle F Davis and Cecilia D’Anastasio) via Hachima Kikō, Yahoo! Finance
