Niantic announces a Harry Potter AR game
primesuspect
Beepin n' BoopinDetroit, MI Icrontian
Niantic, the company behind Ingress and Pokemon Go, have low-key announced their next game: Harry Potter Wizards Unite: https://nianticlabs.com/blog/wizardsunite/
With Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, players that have been dreaming of becoming real life Wizards will finally get the chance to experience J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World. Players will learn spells, explore their real world neighborhoods and cities to discover & fight legendary beasts and team up with others to take down powerful enemies. We're thrilled to partner with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and WB Games San Francisco’s development team to bring this magical and beloved series to life in a brand new way. 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.
Comments
Wonder how long it will be until they take wands out of the game and call it an upgrade.
Dealing with the frustration of network congestion and random crashes is just what we need to take wizards down a peg.
Wait what? I thought the Icrontic hivemind regarded Niantic as okay? Why throw shade?
I will say on niantic's defense that they took the idea of Pokemon and cleverly turned it into a fun and mostly true to spirit mobile mmo. I have amazing memories playing that game with friends. That said, they honestly fumbled almost every single aspect of actual delivery of the game for months on end. From app performance/reliability issues, to network problems, to fundamental aspects of how you play the game like footprints just not working at all, players had a lot of reasons to be frustrated. Even considering the size of the game and the company, it still took an alarmingly long time for any changes to get made, although maybe that was because there was such a backlog of critical problems before things like gym balances could be addressed. It's almost as if they released the game 6 months early or something.
Regardless, I think most of us like Niantic and love that they brought pokemon to life for us, but the frankly fairly mild/jesting criticisms in this thread are pretty justified.
Pokemon Go works pretty well now
I feel like I need to comment, unfortunately I don't have a lot to say
I play Pokemon Go every day. It has its issues but (in my specific experiences) no more than TF2 in its hay day or PUBG currently.
I have 0 interest in a Harry Potter game although if you asked me 13 months ago I would have said I have 0 interest in a Pokemon game.
I suppose the only thing to say is: Hopefully this doesn't take any dev or server resources away from Pokemon Go.
YER A WIZARD NOW 'ARRY
I wonder, if they have a faction system in this one likely using the Hogwarts houses, will they do a Sorting Hat method to assign you a house or will you just choose it yourself? Maybe both available?
When it comes to their development and maintenance of Pokemon GO, they've certainly been improving, but still stumbling here and there (the event they had in Chicago did not go well.) I'd be really surprised if all they've made and learned from GO doesn't help them with this wizarding endeavor. I don't think Harry Potter is gonna blow up as much as Pokemon did though, so that might help with server stability.
“But if it matters to you, you'll be able to choose Gryffindor over Slytherin. The Sorting Hat takes your choice into account."
FTFY.
I am house Tequilapuff
Not the same game but interestingly enough, another Harry Potter mobile game coming...
SNL called the AR game "Harry Potter and the Children Who Walked Into Traffic".