March 13, 2025
Tech News
Pokémon Go maker Niantic is selling its games division to Scopely for $3.5 billion, adding $350 million in cash to total $3.85 billion for its equity holders. This sale marks a significant shift in Niantic’s focus towards 3D mapping instead of game development.
As part of the deal with Scopely, all employees from Niantic’s games segment will join Scopely.
Niantic will channel its efforts into a new entity named Niantic Spatial, aimed at creating real-world 3D maps led by CEO John Hanke. The company received a $250 million cash infusion for this initiative, with both Niantic and Scopely contributing funds.
Despite releasing several titles since Pokémon GO, Niantic has struggled to replicate its success, facing complaints about increased paid content. Recently, the company has also discontinued many high-profile projects due to evolving market conditions.
In another tech update, Dapr, a microservices runtime, is now equipped to support AI agents, merging fundamental building blocks that existed since its inception in 2019. This development allows for efficient scaling and orchestration of AI agents through Dapr’s built-in capabilities.
Dapr Agents, derived from the Floki open-source project, provides developers with tools to create scalable AI agents seamlessly. These agents can communicate with popular model providers such as AWS Bedrock and OpenAI, highlighting Dapr’s adaptability in a rapidly evolving tech landscape.
Additionally, Google has issued an apology to Chromecast users for a recent outage affecting certain models. Users experienced “Untrusted device” errors, leading to frustration as they attempted to cast to their devices, prompting an urgent fix from Google.
The root cause of the problem appears to be an expired certificate baked into the Chromecast devices. Google is actively working on a resolution and has promised to keep users updated through its Nest Community page.
Tech Explained
Microservices – This architectural style structures an application as a collection of small, autonomous services that communicate through well-defined APIs. It enhances agility and allows developers to work independently on different components, facilitating easier updates and scalability.
AI Agent – An AI agent is a system capable of autonomous action in a specific environment. The goal of AI agents is to act on behalf of a human user, making decisions based on the analysis of data and situational variables.
Actor Model – This conceptual framework allows for the design of systems where “actors” can send messages, create new actors, and manage state in a distributed manner. It is particularly useful in building scalable and resilient systems by promoting decoupling of components.
Geospatial Data – This type of data represents the location of geographic features and includes information like coordinates, geographical boundaries, and attributes relevant to the location. This data is crucial for applications such as mapping and geographic analysis.
