Niantic talks Pokemon GO & third party apps, longevity, content updates & nearby feature

Coming from a Eurogamer interview with Niantic's chief marketing officer Mike Quigley...

On third party apps:

"They were just crushing us on the server side. I won't say it's a no-win situation but it's a tough balance. You've got to keep fans happy but you also have to keep the core product accessible. Some of the server outages back in July were a punch in stomach. For us, for fans, for The Pokémon Company too - it's not a good signal for their brand. We're very close to them and we have to do right by the brand, by our players and Niantic. That's why we had to make some of those hard decisions like blocking third-party sites. It's difficult but ultimately it's the right thing to do for the life of the product."

On the game's lifespan:

"I think our lifespan and curve may be quite different from a free-to-play mobile game - it may be more in a [World of] Warcraft vein just because of the type of game we are. It's not about taking a bunch of money off the table and going. Monetisation has never been the focus for us. It's about doing right by the brand and doing right by the fans."

On upcoming content updates:

"...there are things coming in the next several weeks... I think if you look back on this conversation on December 31st, or the 1st of January, what I've said will be validated. But even that stuff is still the tip of the iceberg - there's a long road to go."

On the nearby feature:

"As we get Nearby rolled out globally we know the feedback will keep coming, hopefully it meets some of the requests, we'll continue to listen, and then maybe there's a V2 of it that comes out. But the [global roll-out] is an early signal that, hopefully, makes people realise 'oh they're going to make up for this' - because we know in terms of the capture gameplay loop how popular third-party services were."