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Nintendo and The Pokemon Company will invest at least $20M in Ingress developer

With Pokemon GO set to launch next year, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company are showing just how serious they are about this endeavor by investing $20 million upfront to Niantic Labs.

Ozzie Mejia

October 15, 2015 2:33 PM

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How does a studio spin off from a multi-billion dollar entity like Google and hope to fend for itself financially? If you're Niantic Inc., you hope your talents get the attention of another powerful entity and it looks like that's exactly what has wound up happening. Today, Niantic issued a statement that Nintendo and The Pokemon Company are investing $30 million in the studio, much of which will be put towards the development of next year's Pokemon GO.

"It was quite an honor to be on stage in Tokyo last month with legendary games and entertainment heroes Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo, Tsunekazu Ishihara of The Pokemon Company, and Junichi Masuda of GAME FREAK to tell the world about Pokémon GO," reads the official statement from Niantic CEO John Hanke. "We are all incredibly excited about the opportunity to create a product true to the spirit of the original Pokemon games while extending gameplay out into the real world. Because it is a mobile game, players all around the world will be able to immerse themselves in the Pokemon universe on devices they already have in their hands."

Pokemon GO was announced just last month with deployment expected in 2016. The statement adds that $20 million will be invested up front with $10 million in incentives. Niantic also notes that some of this money will go towards the continued growth of Ingress, with Hanke teasing some major updates set to come this fall.

Look for Pokemon GO to hit iOS and Android next year, hopefully with a few features that some of us here at Shacknews are aching to see.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?