Pokemon Group

This July Pokemon Go will become two years old and the game is still extremely popular having millions of players around the globe. But this summer Niantic will also launch Harry Potter game, Wizards Unite and this will be a test for the developer, as to how they struggle between them.

Players have expressed their concerns about Niantic losing focus on Pokemon Go, was a lot still needs to be improved, as they shift focus to Wizards Unite (Get Latest Updates Here).

But it is possible that new Harry Potter-focused WB games studio, Portkey, maybe doing a lot of the heavy lifting and Pokemon Go won’t lose any personnel.

Now what’s interesting is that when Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is launched in 2018, will it make the Pokemon GO player base shift camp and abandon it.

Yes, the two games are different as a world full of magic and wizards is a lot different than one full of monsters to catch and battle, but a lot of Pokemon Go players will also be into Harry Potter and this will cause an overlap between the games. This can be problematic for the Pokemon Go, which is already leaking players and increasingly reliant on IRL team activities like raids.

So Niantic is effectively creating only real competition for its own product. Though others have tried, only one of them Draconius Go can be considered but it still is not a true challenger. There are other upcoming games like AMC’s  Walking Dead: Our World, is still in development and how will the deal with real map data is still to be seen.

I say this because unlike console or PC games it will not be easy to flip between the two games as we are exploring the real world and playing both games simultaneously will be a big drain to the battery. Even if you do not consider battery an issue there are issues like Pokemon Go tracks very little when not active as the primary application on the phone.

WB may use the new Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them storyline, spun out of JK Rowling’s short stories where instead of catching Pokemon with balls, we’re catching Fantastic Beasts with spells, like Newt Scamander in the current film series.  This makes the core concept of the games very similar. Though I hope it is more in-depth than that (like battling with friends in AR using your phone as a wand).

Perhaps the two can co-exist peacefully, but these are uncharted waters given the genre of game, and I’m curious to see what happens.