Pokemon Go developer Niantic and Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment have announced to replicate the success with a new “Harry Potter” augmented reality mobile game.
Almost five years ago Niantic launched Ingress, its first augmented reality mobile game, turning real-world streets, neighbourhoods and cities into a global game board, and bringing people together in a shared digital reality.
This created new incentives for exploration, exercise, and real-world social interaction helped spawn a global community of fans and laid the foundations for Niantic’s real-world AR gaming platform.
Pokemon GO brought that vision to the world at unprecedented scale and served as a catalyst for the further development of the Niantic platform.
Niantic has announced the next step in the evolution of AR mobile entertainment.
“Harry Potter: Wizards Unite”, will allows players to explore J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world and realise their dream of becoming real life wizards.
Players will learn spells, explore their real world neighbourhoods and cities to discover & fight legendary beasts and team up with others to take down powerful enemies.
Niantic has partnered with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and WB Games San Francisco’s development team and its newly created Portkey Games label to bring the magical series to life in a brand new way.
This will bring the popular book and film series to mobile phones and use augmented reality (AR) to create a real-world scavenger hunt, allow players to cast spells, find artefacts, team up and encounter magical beasts and characters.
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will leverage the full stack of the Niantic Platform while also providing an opportunity to pioneer all new technology and gameplay mechanics.
The game’s use of real locations is similar to Niantic and Nintendo’s Pokemon Go, which became the first mass market adoption of AR in July 2016 and allows players to “catch” animated characters that appeared in their real surroundings.
No release date was given for the “Harry Potter” game, but Niantic and Warner Bros said more details would be available next year.
Warner Bros Pictures, which produced the $7.7 billion-grossing “Harry Potter” film franchise, will release “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2” in November 2018, the second installment in a new series of films.
