Hard to believe, but it's been a whole year since Scopely acquired Pokemon Go studio, Niantic. There were fears among the Pokemon Go community at the time, fueled by how Scopely approaches some of its other bigger mobile games. Those fears remain unfounded, thankfully, and to mark the first anniversary of Scopely's Pokemon Go acquisition, the studio has confirmed there will probably never be a sequel.
There's Not Going To Be A Pokemon Go 2
Ed Wu, the president of games at Scopely and former SVP of Pokemon Go, told GamesIndustry.biz that there isn't going to be a Pokemon Go sequel. Some of you, like me, might be wondering why Wu would address something that I didn't realize anybody was expecting. However, considering the massive success of Pokemon Go, and Scopely potentially wanting to make something of its own that's still Pokemon Go at its core, it stands to reason that there are people out there who might have thought the game might one day get a sequel.
Pokemon Go Director Assures Players The Game Will Not Be Getting Intrusive Ads Or Restrictions
Even though Scopely now owns Pokemon Go, it will not be getting the typical Scopely features, apparently.
"I think that doing a sequel within a franchise is pretty clearly not the correct thing to do," Wu explains when addressing the notion of a Pokemon Go 2. Isolated, that's an odd thing to say that doesn't make much sense. Every sequel, by the very nature of what a sequel is, is within a franchise.
Splitting The Pokemon Go Community With A Sequel Doesn't Make Sense
Wu expands on his explanation by pointing to the Pokemon Go community as the leading reason why there will likely never be a Pokemon Go 2, at least not in the conventional sense. "There's such a big community because of the way that our games can be a part of folks' lives wherever they go, however they explore the world. Creating a sequel that divides the community doesn't make as much sense."
That doesn't mean Scopely will never create a follow-up to Pokemon Go, though. Wu notes that if Scopely were to ever do something new with the Pokemon Go premise, it would need to be something entirely different. He doesn't explicitly say it, but it also seems likely that if a Scopely-developed Pokemon Go spinoff were to ever happen, it would exist alongside the hit mobile game rather than replace it.
I think the perfect case study here, and the mistakes from which Scopely can learn, is Overwatch. Blizzard foolishly assumed that the world wanted an Overwatch sequel. Turns out the world really didn't want that. Even though Overwatch 2 was free to play, it received a huge amount of backlash at launch and was so hated by the community that, even though it took a while, Blizzard backtracked, and the sequel is now simply called Overwatch, as if the sequel never really happened and we just had the original game all along.
