“Niantic is not really a game company. They are a mapping company, right? … Pokemon Go is based on this mapping technology, which has these GPS points, a zero-dimensional pinpoint. But I can't put a racing car game on a pinpoint. I need a racetrack.”
The AI XR Podcast. · October 2026
One of the hosts asked Monsarrat why Pokemon Go became a huge hit while the company's later location games, including a Harry Potter one, did not. Monsarrat, who builds location-based games himself, says the underlying technology only knows about points on a map, which suits catching creatures but not much else.
Transcript
It was very unique.
Here's a question for you, Johnny. You mentioned Niantic and their kind of one-hit wonder with Pokemon Go, which still is an extraordinarily large cash driver for whatever the new Niantic that got acquired and absorbed is. Why do you think it didn't work with Harry Potter and that other thing, Pimpkin something? They did two or three other things that were sort of within the same vein, the same game mechanics. You were the expert on this. Why did Pokemon Go work so well, become a monster hit, and the other, arguably Harry Potter, potentially even much more, you know, bigger and more relevant IP than Pokemon, although a lot of people would argue, you know, Pokemon's the biggest IP in the world. Why didn't the other two work or the three or four other things that they tried work? Give us some insight. You know, this podcast is about learning some insights about what works and what doesn't.
I'm going to tell you an open secret. Niantic is not really a game company. They are a mapping company, right? So they love maps. Pokemon Go is based on this mapping technology, which has these GPS points, a zero-dimensional pinpoint. But I can't put a racing car game on a pinpoint. I need a racetrack. I can't put a fantasy world like Harry Potter on a pinpoint. I need a fantasy race. It doesn't
work. It just fundamentally doesn't work. Right.
The technology for walking around to GPS points, collecting Pokemon, it just didn't appeal to fans of Harry Potter. That isn't what Harry Potter does in the books and the movies. He doesn't collect stuff. Harry Potter has an adventure with a wizard and a mystery and his friends and they're sneaking into the basement and uncovering the crypt. That all kind of role-playing stuff. It can't be supported by this Niantic approach.
So you think if like the Warner execs called you up and said, Johnny, give us a little consult on this. Should we spend $100 million doing this? You basically said, no, and I'll tell you why. And this is part of the problem with the sort of hubris of certain movie executives is they don't listen to the people that understand the actual mechanics of games and why they work and why they don't work. It's very interesting. Very interesting to me.
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