Pokemon Go Creators Raise $200 Million in Capital Ahead of New Harry Potter Game

Niantic has raised a lot of money to prepare for its upcoming slate of augmented reality games.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the San Francisco based tech company raised a whopping $200 million in capital from various investors and capital firms. By comparison, Niantic raised only $30 million when Nintendo, the Pokemon Company, and other companies contributed capital prior to the launch of Pokemon Go.

Niantic confirmed the capital raise to CNET, saying that the new investment "enables new strategic opportunities and enhances our ability to make long-term investments in augmented reality and the Niantic real-world platform."

Last month, Niantic announced it was partnering with Warner Bros. to make a new augmented reality game based on the Harry Potter franchise. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will give players a chance to learn spells and use them against evil magical creatures that roam the "real world" of the game.

Shortly after announcing Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, Niantic also affirmed that it was "doubling down" on the continued development of Pokemon Go and posted a number of new jobs related to both games. Niantic also announced it had purchased a social media startup company to design social platforms for its various games, a feature that many fans have wanted due to the cooperative nature of Pokemon Go and Ingress.

The capital will hopefully allow Niantic to build more infrastructure and respond to bugs and issues in their games more quickly. When Pokemon Go launched last year, Niantic's servers were overwhelmed with traffic, which resulted in widespread outages and stunted the game's popularity. As Harry Potter is one of the few media franchises that arguably exceeds Pokemon in popularity, Niantic's new game could see similar issues unless some major upgrades are made to servers.

The capital raise is a sign that Niantic won't be going anywhere anytime soon. $200 million is a lot of money, so let's hope we see some significant improvements to Pokemon Go in the near future.