The company Niantic, which is the developer of mobile games as successful as the well-known Pokémon Go, will close its Harry Potter: Wizard’s Unite game on January 31, 2022. The game will be withdrawn from the App Store, Google Play and the Galaxy Store on December 6, and that same day, you will no longer be able to make in-game purchases, according to the game’s own website. The HPWU community forum and its social media channels will also be fully closed on January 31st.
It has been a complete failure
In an official blog post and on the FAQ tab, Niantic does not specify why it has finally decided to shut down Harry Potter: Wizard’s Unite . But it doesn’t surprise anyone either, since since it came out in early 2019, social networks and forums were filled with comments that always pointed towards the same idea: disappointment .
And is that the level was incredibly high with Pokemon Go, and the developers never knew how to make a quality adaptation for the Harry Potter universe, so the game never reached the same level of popularity as the brand’s namesake product, which is still incredibly successful despite being over five years old (you just have to look at the download data and the amount of money that is moved in the online store of the game itself).
The CEO of Niantic, John Hanke, has pointed out that the system that the game used was created for Pokémon GO and Ingress, so when adapting it for other titles it has been quite unbalanced, so this may also explain the reasons for the noisy title failure.
Although the game posted decent numbers after its initial launch, it was clear early on that it wasn’t reaching the same levels of success as Pokémon GO. Despite the pandemic, Pokémon GO had its highest-grossing year in 2020, raising more than € 1 billion in Europe alone, and the app is already topping those earnings figures this year.
“Not all games are meant to last forever,” Niantic wrote in a post on its website. “We achieved our goals together, delivering a two-year story arc that will soon be completed. It is true that Niantic’s Harry Potter game is much more narrative-driven than Pokémon Go, which only vaguely points to a plot. But the numbers behind it. These games speak of another possible reason behind the closure.
There has been no other success in this type of game that is even close to the level of Pokémon Go; Niantic’s adaptation of Catan will also close completely this month, while Microsoft already had to shelve Minecraft Earth last June. However, that hasn’t stopped Niantic from giving it a go, as they just released the Pikmin Bloom game, focused on Pikmin, and has another title based on the Transformers universe in the works.
