Samsung reportedly invests $40 million in Niantic for an exclusive Harry Potter game

[Glasgow]

Word on the street is Samsung is about to sign an deal with Niantic for the production and exclusive distribution of mobile games. The main focus of the joint partnership, however, will be the production of a rather intriguing Harry Potter title in the same vein of Niantic's massively-popular Pokemon Go game. The deal will reportedly cost Samsung nearly $40 million, though it won't be an overstatement to claim that both companies will greatly benefit from this deal - Niantic will raise some much needed cash for its rumored upcoming IPO, whereas Samsung will stand out among the other Android vendors with a high-tier mobile game. 

The Inquirer reports that the Harry Potter title might make a rather unique use of the Galaxy Note series' S Pen stylus, which could double as a... virtual magic wand, of course! It's logical to assume the stylus would be used to hurl expeliarmuses and accios around, and is nothing short of the most appropriate accessory for the job. Hopefully, the game won't be exclusive to Galaxy Notes only and will be available for many other Samsung devices, but it's very nice that Samsung is looking to utilize its unique hardware strengths in such a way. Let's face it, the S Pen stylus is criminally under-used in contemporary mobile games. 

It's unclear if said Harry Potter title will be a revamped variation of Niantic's Harry Potter: Wizards Unite game or a totally-new title developed exclusively for Galaxy phones. Aside from developing a new Harry Potter game, this $40m deal will allow Samsung to pre-load the existing Niantic games on future Galaxy devices. This would certainly apply to all games except for the wildly-popular Pokemon Go, which doesn't seem to be part of the exclusivity deal. Sounds like Niantic is very protective of its most valuable game. This means that Ingress would likely be the most well-known title to be part of the deal so far.

The deal is said to become official in the coming weeks as either Samsung and Niantic are supposedly waiting for their newly-fangled technical collaboration to score further progress before they go public with their partnership. We suppose that we might hear more about that at either CES 2019 in Vegas or MWC 2019 in Barcelona, Spain, where we expect Samsung to host press events. With the Galaxy S10 being just around the corner, we could see the first batch of Niantic games preloaded, but that mysterious Harry Potter title will likely be ready further in the future, possibly for the Galaxy Note 10.

Samsung is certainly no stranger to such exclusivity deals - aside from hoarding chipsets for months, the South Korean giant also had the exclusivity rights on Fortnite on Android for a while. It seems like Harry Potter, Ron, and Hermione might be next in line.