Welcome to Lowpass! This week: Roku is taking on third-party remote control apps, and Niantic is trying to sell Pokemon Go.

Roku goes to war against third-party remote control apps

A couple of weeks ago, a number of Roku owners ran into a puzzling issue: Their Roku TVs and streaming devices wouldn’t respond to remote control apps on their phones anymore – which can be annoying if you’ve misplaced the original remote between your couch cushions, and downright debilitating if said remote broke or is otherwise out of the picture.

“It doesn't ever work,” noted one user. “It says it is connected to my TV but it does nothing.” “It's not changing the channels in the guide on the app now,” added another user. “This has been working for several years now,” a third person complained, adding: “I'm very disappointed cuz now I can't use my Roku.”

All three complaints, and many others like it, had one thing in common: The consumers in question were using RoByte, one of a number of third-party remote control apps for Roku devices.

RoByte has been downloaded more than 10 million times since it was first published in 2015, according to publicly available Google Play data. Other Roku-specific third-party apps have clocked hundreds of thousands of downloads over the years. Some universal TV remote apps also compatible with Roku devices have seen millions of downloads on Google Play as well. iPhone users can download many similar apps from Apple’s App Store.

Roku’s relationship with these third-party app developers has long been complicated. Many of them use names and color schemes similar to those used by Roku, forcing the company to now list its own app as “The Roku App (Official)” on Google Play. Some third-party app developers charge their users for functionality that is available for free via Roku’s own mobile app, while other apps feature intrusive advertising, and at least some users have confused those offerings with the official Roku app.

The company responded to this in recent years with a policy change that amounts to a kind of stern warning, clarifying that API commands used to control Roku devices on the local network “may not be sent from 3rd-party platforms (for example, mobile applications).” Then, in December, Roku dropped the other shoe: Starting with version 14.1 of its operating system, Roku effectively locked out third-party remote control apps, requiring consumers who wanted to keep using them to change the settings of their TVs or streaming devices first.

“Roku made a huge change that effectively broke 3rd party apps,” explained RoByte’s developer in response to the complaint of an unhappy user. 

For a while, the app added a splash screen to explain how users could get it to work again, leading to further complaints. “Trust me, I did not want to add that permission screen either,” the developer responded to another complaint. “Unfortunately Roku made a stupid decision to block 3rd party apps.”

For Roku, this isn’t just about the issue of consumers confusing third-party apps with its own mobile app. As the company has been building out its platform business, it has also turned the official Roku app what was once a simple mobile remote control into what amounts to a full-fledged mobile video service, with direct access to live and on-demand content from the Roku Channel for on-the-go viewing.

To further monetize its mobile app, Roku also recently began showing banner ads directly on the app’s home screen – a change that didn’t go over well with some consumers, with one writing on Reddit: “I'll have to find another remote app. Super tacky on Roku's part.”

As for those “other” apps, it does appear that some of them started to work again, at least for the time being: RoByte’s developer told the app’s users this week issues connecting to Roku devices were fixed with a new app update. 

Roku and RoByte’s developer did not respond to requests for comment.

Why Niantic is trying to sell off Pokemon Go

Pokemon Go maker Niantic is getting ready to sell off its crown jewel: The company is in talks with mobile game giant Scopely to sell its gaming division for $3.5 billion, Bloomberg reported earlier this week. A deal between the two companies could be announced in the coming weeks, according to the report.

There’s a few things to unpack here, starting with the obvious: Pokemon Go may have lost some of its shine since its launch almost a decade ago, but the price tag shows that it is still a massive money maker. The game is estimated to have generated close to $8 billion on the App Store and Google Play over eight years, including $1.3 billion in 2020 alone – despite the fact that many people were stuck at home for months. Niantic also launched its own web shop for in-game items in 2023, which likely generated many more millions of dollars.

And while many casual players may have moved on, Pokemon Go still has a massive global audience of hardcore fans. Pokemon GO Fest, Niantic’s annual global celebration of the game, brought more than 68,000 players to New York’s Randall’s Island Park alone, according to company estimates.

Now you might wonder: If things are going so well, why sell?

Pokemon Go is a one-hit wonder. When Pokemon Go first became popular, many people (me included) assumed that this could be the start of a whole new type of location-based gaming. Turns out this wasn’t really the case: Niantic tried and failed to replicate the game’s success with a range of well-known IP, including Harry Potter (discontinued in early 2022), the NBA (shut down in 2023), Marvel (development cancelled in that same year) and Settlers of Catan (never made it out of early access testing). As they say: Lightning rarely strikes twice.

Pokemon Go has done its job. Over the past few years, Nianrtic has shifted its efforts from trying to build the next Pokemon Go to building out its own mapping and AR tech stack. “We [...] want to increase our focus on building for the emerging class of MR devices and future AR glasses,” wrote Niantic CEO John Hanke when he announced the closure of the company’s LA game studio in 2023. To prepare for that AR future, Niantic acquired WebXR studio 8th Wall in 2022, invested in the creation and consumption of Gaussian splats, and built out its own Visual Positioning System – basically a global 3D map of the world, designed to be the canvas for tomorrow’s location-aware AR experiences.

Pokemon Go didn’t just help bankroll those efforts, but its players also generated huge amounts of data for Niantic’s mapping efforts by locating, photographing and scanning points of interest. The big challenge for Niantic is now to move beyond those Pokestops, and map everything in-between – something that the game and its many millions of players are less helpful with.

Plus: Letting go of Pokemon Go doesn’t necessarily mean that Niantic is being cut off from the data spigot altogether. I have no idea how this deal, if it happens, is going to be structured. But I’d imagine Niantic might want to license its mapping tech to Scopely, and in exchange get continued access to some of the geospatial data generated by its players.

Niantic needs a war chest for what’s next. Building the platform of choice for the future of geospatial AR doesn’t come cheap, especially if your competition includes tech giants like Google and Apple. Sure, Niantic could have tried to simply raise more money, but any investor would have likely pushed the company to focus on short-term profitability. On trying to build another Pokemon Go, as opposed to a 3D map of the world map that won’t generate meaningful returns for years to come. By spinning out its games division, and raising $3.5 billion in the process, Niantic can fully dedicated itself to the future of AR.

What else

HP is buying Humane’s assets for $116M. Put a pin in that: The maker of the AI Pin is reportedly being sold to HP, where its team will work on bringing AI to … printers? Existing AI Pins will lose most of their functionality by the end of the month.

Trump teases 25% tariffs on chips. Call me crazy, but wouldn’t a policy like that make it less likely that consumer electronics companies onshore their manufacturing?

Cars with Google built-in get Fubo, Paramount+ apps. Google’s dashboard OS is onboarding dozens of new apps, including some streaming mainstays.

Quest OS update makes web apps pinnable. Good news for WebXR developers: Quest users can now pin any web page or app to their library.

Facebook starts deleting old live streams. Archived recordings of streams that are more than 30 days old are now being automatically deleted.

Gen Alpha never left the metaverse, marketers did. A smart take from Code & Theory co-founder Dan Gardner.

Spotify is making it easier to release audiobooks narrated by AI. The music service now allows authors and publishers to use AI recordings created by ElevenLabs.

Meta makes big push for Horizon Worlds mobile games. The company has announced a $50 million creator fund for Horizon, and will launch a $1 million competition for mobile games next month. Horizon creators will also have access to new development tools, including some powered by generative AI.

That’s it

I know, I know, all the good jokes about Humane’s untimely demise / fire sale have already been made. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from throwing my hat in the ring …

Thanks for reading, have a great weekend!

And many thanks to Whale TV for sponsoring this issue of Lowpass.

Pokemon Go photo by Jakayla Toney on Unsplash, Roku remote photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash.