Niantic's Pokémon GO-Style Harry Potter Mobile Game Is Being Shut Down

Sucks that these service games aim to take your money and in The end you get nothing out of it once the service dies.

Harry Potter 0 - Nintendo 2. We just keep on winning 😛

@gloom
cough cough, Dr Mario World, cough cough

@Strictlystyles

Just like cloud games.

Here's to Rowling's next project!

@Screen true, but at least they cost less.

basically means they failed to empty wallets with it

@Grot

The difference is the arcade didn't charge you full price for a worse version of the experience and told you exactly how long said experience would last up front.

Seems like a normal mobile game run. Sucks for those that are playing it though.

Pokemon Go was successful not just of the Pokemon name itself. It was successful because the game style fit the IP. The kind of game that they released for Harry Potter just didn't work.

@Grot arcades are not exactly the same thing, especially when you realize just how much money people are shelling out for a single mobile title that may or may not be dead at any given time. At least with arcades you are getting a more polished gaming experience, and then you could buy the machine if you really wanted to. With mobile titles people are shelling out hundreds to thousands over the life of the title for a mid at best gaming experience.

Q : Are you at all surprised to hear Niantic's Pokémon GO-style Harry Potter game didn't take off?

Me : Not surprised at all. That's the fate of mobile games, being removed in the future anytime like it was never happened. And that's the reason i will never play and support mobile games.

@nessisonett You can't pick and choose who you like in the LGBTQ+ Community. I would call her a haggis (in nice words), but the poor dish as been though enough slander as it is.

(Speaking of, is haggis actually that good? It's basically a sheep sausage with oats, right?)

@NatiaAdamo Haggis is like really peppery sausage but can sometimes be a bit more like mince. The difference between good haggis and bad haggis is massive though. I just try not to think about what sorta weird meat goes into that.

@Strictlystyles To say arcades offered "more polish" is subjective, not factual.

As an example, games like Pokemon Go, Pocket Camp, and Zenonia have offered me more longevity and engagement than several arcade games from my youth.

@CharlieGirl at the time of arcades they were the most polished experience you could get. We are not literally comparing an old arcade game to a modern mobile game. Just comparing the experience. And the experience of a mobile game is for the most part, subpar to that of your average AAA game.

@Grot mobile games are a legitimate scam lol. We’re not talking about just digital purchases, I digitally purchase games all the time. But the way a lot of these mobile titles monetize their content is a total scam. It’s usually not based off gameplay or new content like dlc. A lot of it is just rolling the dice on something with a .98746 to 4% chance of hitting every couple of weeks. I don’t know how you can defend these practices tbh.

@Strictlystyles "And the experience of a mobile game is for the most part, subpar to that of your average AAA game."

That's a subjective opinion. Different people find value in different games.

@CharlieGirl just because you find something fun doesn’t mean you still aren’t shelling out hundreds of dollars for a lower quality game.

@Grot

Cloud games are lazy and disingenuous, and the fear is that one day it may be the only option.

If the Witcher 3 and Doom Eternal can run on Switch, most games can.

The great thing about not buying digital games and DLC is you never have to worry about getting burned like this!

Just another reason to sail the seven seas...

Speaking of Harry Potter, I hope that we can get remastered versions or ports of all of the games, with ALL versions intact (including handheld adaptations).

@IpwnedU123 : All aboard!

I used to go to arcades all the time too. I had the choice to play Mortal Kombat and Shinobi in the arcade, but I could also (and did) buy the games for a home console. I had a choice.

When some lazy dev releases a "cloud" version of a game on Switch instead of a proper native/local version, that's the ONLY version of the game they make available on Switch. I don't have a choice.

If I could choose between a full/local edition of Resident Evil 7 or Dying Light 2 on the Switch, and the "cloud" edition, your argument and comparison to arcades would hold up. But I can't, so it doesn't.

And @Screen said it well. If fricken DOOM can play on the Switch, then these other games could be ported and optimized to provide an adequate non-cloud experience. Another good example is Hellblade.

@Strictlystyles presuming that I, myself, have spent "hundreds of dollars" on a mobile game is a bold assumption.

Looks like Harry Potter wasn't able to conquer Pokemon Go's terf.

I always think it's a shame when games are lost and won't be played again...but I'm not surprised.

Quite hard to sell a game when it's just Pokémon Go with another IP. Especially when Harry Potter has been ruined for so many people in the past couple of years.

It's a shame that the people who have fun with these games and pay money to use on them are getting them taken away so soon. Doesn't bode well for Pikmin Bloom if games with the Mario and Harry Potter licence only last 2 years.

The game just launched at least 7 years too late.

The last Harry Potter movie was in 2011.

Fantastic Beasts movies are nice, but it didn't attract the same popularity as the original Harry Potter movies did.

Then the mobile game itself was just sorely disappointing and boring/repetitive in many ways.
They never really added much to it, like they did with Pokemon GO.
Which most likely only made it worse with people losing interest and stop playing the game.

The only reason why Pokemon GO is still popular is that it's Pokemon for one and two, people are heavily invested in the game (both in time and money).

Pikmin Bloom is fun so far, but again, its really barebones at the moment and they will need to add a lot more to the game overtime or it will die out even quicker than Wizards Unite did.

I didn't even know this game existed...

@Grot this is a great analogy I hadn't thought about yet!
(I don't put money in arcades either, but really regret not playing the Mario Kart one a few years back! )

i feel sorry for people that wasted money and time on this trash. I'm not optimistic about the pikmin VR game either. I mean i know the names of hundred pokemon, i can't name one Pikmin

Probably not the best licence Niantic could have gone with given this game was produced WELL after J.K.R. switched to pissing off her fans and alienating new potential readers as a full time job.

I'm not going to say Potter is "dead", but if you look at the new movie releases they are only held up by world wide box office number ... in places were people don't speak English and can't read her tweets I'm guessing.

I played this early on and agree that, much as I like the HP stories and world, it isn’t a good fit for this type of game. Definitely felt like a good bit of shoe-horning going on. And I doubt that it has much to do with JKR’s public views either. While I don’t agree with what she is saying (from the little I’ve heard) I think plenty of people will either not be aware or will just separate the creator from the art. Not everyone of course.

I tried the game and I'm not surprised. It was such a blatant and immediate cash grab. You barely even got time to learn the ropes before the game was poking you to pay up.

@dimi probably because they don’t have names other than their color.

If a name can sell a game, it's hard to believe that Pokemon can, but Harry Potter can't...

Beware anyone who invests any time in the Pikmin game. I wouldn't spend a dime, cuz it'll likely end up in a similar fate, IMO.

@Strictlystyles

I think the business model is basically perfect, and a wonderful thing for gaming.

These games are free ... UNLESS you have some huge entitlement issues that make you think that YOU are special, YOU should never have to wait for anything, YOU shouldn't need to work towards anything, it should be handed to you without effort, and that no one should ever, ever be allowed to be more advantaged then you. If that's the case, yeah, you are going to spend a LOT of these games, but I'm also going to guess based on the presence of the entitlement that you've got a fair bit of disposable income.

Or maybe you're just rich AF? Maybe you look at the timer that says "play for an hour or $1 to unlock" and think "well, I make $5000 an hour and I want to experience that thing, so paying is the better option." Maybe you're used to spending money to slightly enhance a temporary experience, like paying for fast track or front row tickets to Hamilton vs seeing it in the back. I mean I pay like $200 a year in park fees for the 2 or 3 times a year I go camping. What's valuable to one person isn't the same as what's valuable to the next. Some people will only lease and rent cars because the value of never driving a car that's older then a few years is more then the value of owning one as far as they are concerned.

Or maybe you have a bit of income, and you really like the game, so you toss in a buck to support them. It's Patreon without someone taking a 30%.

Or maybe you're broke or your don't think the game is that good. Then it's free.

Again, anger at this business model is generally the ultimate in entitlement, where people scream because you feel you should be able to just pay $20 and get everything.

What about people that don't have $20? I think it's awesome that entitled clowns and ultra rich people are literally paying to get them the game for free.

It doesn’t matter if the games are free, the monetization scheme for a lot of these games is still a predatory scam aimed at luring people in with f2p mechanics and then coaxing them into gambling their money away on RNG characters/items to keep up. it just promotes lazy game development that isn’t worth the money being put into it.
Even those strategy/puzzle games with the “timer” element get so bad at f2p, you are waiting days and not hrs, in which people who are that entrenched will just shell out the money. I’d rather pay money and get a decent game then an half assed gatcha game that’s scamming it’s users.

@nessisonett Huh. Good to know.

@Zuljaras I agree your comment was not offensive, maybe ask the mods about it on email and they will restore your comment? It could be that many people reported your comment for some reason.

Eel has said moderation is heavily based on reports, and Nintendolife says we should take questions regarding moderation on email instead of public.

To be fair, it WAS based on a niche franchise that most people have never heard of.

They should've gone with a more popular IP like Pikmin. 😬😬😬

Really they should wait few weeks before they announce it. It doesn't inspire confidence for the Pikmin game

I remember hearing that this game was coming out... and then I didnt realise that it did... and now its gone lol.