Tag: Niantic

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Mobile Syrup

A new augmented reality Monster Hunter game is in the works

Mobile developer Niantic, arguably best known for developing Pokémon Go, is working on an augmented reality version of Monster Hunter for iOS and Android devices titled Monster Hunt Now.

The game is described as a “real-world hunting RPG” and will see the company team up with Capcom to produce it. Monster Hunt Now pulls elements from the ever-popular Pokémon Go app, with users having to walk around with their phones to find monsters to battle.

Users can also team up with other players and use materials they’ve gathered to build weapons and armour for battle. Additionally, players can tag in-game monsters they encounter to battle them at home or with friends.

As revealed by Niantic and Capcom at a press briefing, Monster Hunter will be free-to-play and feature in-app purchases. Combat will largely be based on users swiping and tapping their phones to defeat monsters.

Players will also be able to battle in both portrait and landscape mode, with the letter providing the classic Monster Hunter experience from previous PC and console installments of the series.

For mobile gaming optimization, the traditional battles that would normally last five or more minutes will be scrapped in favour of fights that are no longer than 75 seconds. Sakae Osumi, a Niantic senior producer, says the move to shorten the battles is an effort to “encapsulate Monster Hunter’s fun battles within a shorter window of time.”

Niantic is accepting sign-ups for Monster Hunt Now‘s closed beta test, which starts on April 25th. The final product could be released as soon as September 2023, if testing goes as planned.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Source: @MH_Now_EN Via: Engadget

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Mobile Syrup

Niantic’s Tamagotchi-like Peridot is now available for pre-registration on iOS and Android

Niantic built a name for itself with Pokémon Go and is soon launching its own original take on the “catch em’ all’ formula, Peridot. The title is an original IP from the studio and focuses on collecting and attending to an array of colourful new creatures.

Peridot has long been in development following several not-so-successful releases from Niantic. Following titles like Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, Pikmin Bloom, and other licenced games, Niantic is pivoting to an original concept.

Niantic’s title soft launched in beta in Malaysia last year. This revealed a lot of information about the game, offering insight into what players will experience. Rather than a straight clone of Pokémon Go, Niantic appears to be instilling more Tamagotchi-like mechanics into Peridot.

In Peridot, players start with one creature. From there, they’ll be able to interact with other active players and breed their Peridot to spawn new creatures. In turn, the offspring inherit traits from their parent creatures, making them unique. However, breeding and growing a roster of Peridots is only one component of the game.

Much like Tamagotchi, players must actively take care of their creatures. This means you’ll be tasked with petting, playing, and feeding your Peridots. Additionally, you’ll need to go on walks with your creature to keep them happy.

Naturally, Niantic aims to introduce augmented reality (AR) elements into the game. Much like its other mobile titles, Peridot will bring the creatures to the real world through the use of a smartphone. Players can tap the screen and draw to interact and entertain their creature.

It remains to be seen whether Peridot will be a smashing success like Pokémon Go was upon its launch in 2016. However, not being tied to a licence could give Niantic some much-needed flexibility in its ongoing support of the game.

Preregistration for Peridot is available now on iOS and Android. The game will be available in Canada and worldwide on May 9th.

Image credit: Niantic

Source: Android Police

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Mobile Syrup

Niantic and Qualcomm show off reference design AR glasses

At the 2022 Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm and Niantic have announced their partnership with one another for an immersive glasses experience.

While the companies haven’t mentioned anything regarding a release date for a consumer product, Niantic has showed off reference designs for AR glasses.

The most recent design looks sleek, and lightweight, which is due to the recently announced Snapdragon AR2 platform. The new platform, which Qualcomm says it built from the ground up, will reportedly allow hardware makers to release thinner AR glasses.

And Niantic announced that in 2023 the LightShip visual positioning system will work with the Snapdragon Spaces XR developer platform with the hope to help developers create future experiences. This means that developers using the Snapdragon Spaces XR developer platform can easily add the Lightship system to their games or experiences.

Following this explanation, Niantic gave us a glimpse of what this experience could look like.

You can learn more about Qualcomm’s AR2 processor, click here.

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Mobile Syrup

Revenue for AR mobile games like Pokémon Go said to be on the decline

Over the last few years, the augmented reality (AR) mobile games market has seen quite the rise in popularity. For some studios such as Pokémon Go developer Niantic, this translated to an unwavering amount of success. However, the trajectory of mass user adoption and success may be slowing down.

Niantic has launched a number of popular AR titles over the years. This includes Ingress and Pokémon Go. The latter has seen a ton of success both in revenue and player acquisition. Over the course of seven years, Niantic and Pokémon Go have set the bar for AR mobile titles.

However, Niantic recently faced internal layoffs. Despite acquiring new studios and developing new games like Peridot, the studio let go of eight percent of its staff (85-90 employees). The company is also cancelling the development of Transformers: Heavy Metal.

Now, analysts believe that the AR gaming market may be facing a significant dip. Omidia Analyst Guillermo Escofet states that Pokémon Go’s revenue has dipped an estimated 45 percent in 2022. Outside of Niantic, the market itself faces a decrease of 20 percent in revenue. The last time the AR gaming market saw a significant decline was in 2019.

Based on these drops, Escofet now believes that the AR game market’s projections require a major recalculation. Previously, it was predicted that the market would bring in roughly $6.7 billion USD (about $8.6 billion CAD) in projected revenue. Now, Escofet states that the AR games market is on track to earn only $2.5 billion USD (about $3.2 billion CAD).

While the AR games market faces another decline, Escofet believes that it can sustain itself once again. However, there are two major barriers. The first is that Niantic and Pokémon Go dominate the market space. As of now, it appears as though players adopt one title and stick with it. Breaking that cycle will be crucial.

The other barrier is the Chinese market. As of now, AR titles don’t have the mass popularity of other mobile games. Pokémon Go, for instance, isn’t available in China. Tencent’s Let’s Hunt Monsters, an equivalent title, has failed to generate a lot of revenue.

Pokémon Go’s launch in 2015 set a course for AR games. For many players, this was their first exposure to AR gaming. However, its success has placed the game and Niantic in a bubble. For now, there hasn’t been a competitor that has come close to being that next sensation in the market.

However, AR technology is still quite young and as it advances, so can its popularity. Plus, with new innovations come new ways to generate revenue.

Image credit: Niantic

Source: GameDeveloper

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Mobile Syrup

Niantic to lay off eight percent of work force amid ‘economic turmoil’

Niantic, the augmented reality (AR) mobile game creator hasn’t been able to deliver a new title that is on par with the mania it created in 2016 with Pokémon Go.

Titles like Pikmin Bloom and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite couldn’t replicate Pokémon GO’s success, and the company is now in the midst of laying off its employees.

As reported by Bloomberg, the San Francisco, California-based company is firing eight percent of its staff, on top of cancelling four projects that were planned to come out in the future, including Transformers: Heavy Metal, an AR game based on Hasbro’s Transformers franchise.

Niantic’s CEO John Hanke recently wrote an email to staff, informing them that the company is “facing a time of economic turmoil,” and even though it has been “reducing costs in a variety of areas,” those aren’t enough, and that Niantic needs to “further streamline [its] operations in order to best position the company to weather any economic storms that may lie ahead.”

According to Bloomberg, other projects that have been cancelled include Blue Sky, Snowball and Hamlet, with the latter being developed alongside British theatre company Punchdrunk.

Interestingly enough, when one door closes, another opens. The company announced yesterday that it has partnered with the National Basketball Association (NBA) to create an AR basketball game. The title is expected to land on both iOS and Android during the next NBA season, and might just be the winner that Niantic is looking for. Learn more about the upcoming title below:

Image credit: Shutterstock

Source: Bloomberg

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Mobile Syrup

AR mobile game Peridot looks like another charming hit for Niantic

Niantic is best known for its ongoing development of Pokemon Go but Peridot is the latest to come from the studio. This upcoming AR mobile game is the latest in the developer’s catalogue and we now have a better idea of what the game offers.

As hands-on previews emerge, it sounds as if the game is a hybrid of Pokemon Go and Nintendogs. In some fashion, one could see inspiration taken from Tamagotchi as well. Players receive a small, adorable creature aka a Peridot. Each is unique in its own way and can be given a name. Drawing back to Tamagotchi, Peridots require attention meaning players must pet and feed their creatures.

However, for anyone getting flashbacks to the dreadful day when their Tamagotchis died, don’t worry. Reports confirm that Peridots cannot pass to another digital realm of existence. Instead, the game is more set up to enable players to have a positive experience. Each creature has unique quest systems tied to their individual personalities and interests. To feed a Peridot, players must forage for food and other items. In terms of gameplay, players draw circles on the screen of their device to call their Peridots to grab items. Depending on the terrain, different items can be found.

Peridot also supports a breeding functionality. Players are able to locate habitats using the AR functionality of their device to find streams of bubbles. Here, players can breed their Peridots with those belonging to other players. The result may take traits of both Peridots. For players, there appear to be ways to try to aim for specific traits. However, it remains to be seen how in-depth one can manipulate the offspring’s traits. Though, players can only take care of one Peridot at a time.

Peridot currently does not have a release date. However, it has soft-launched in Malaysia. If it manages to capture a similar audience to Pokemon Go, Niantic could have another big hit on its hands upon a worldwide launch.

Image credit: Niantic

Source: The Verge

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Mobile Syrup

Campfire is Niantic’s social-communication companion app for all its titles

Since Pokémon Go‘s inception in 2016, players have been coordinating their location for raids and meetups on third-party platforms like Reddit and Discord. Now, Pokémon Go‘s parent company, Niantic, is launching Campfire, a location-based social-communication app for all of Niantic’s AR games, eliminating the need for apps like Discord, and giving its player base a reason to use its in-house application.

Campfire will show you a map with the location of all your friends (if they have Campfire), in-game events, communities and more, similar to Snapchat’s Snap Map. “We think of it as the “homepage” of the real-world Metaverse – a place where players can discover other players in their local area, message one another and share content, organize their own events and meetups, and foster the kinds of real-world social connections that have always been at the core of what Niantic does,” reads the company’s press release.

Campfire is already available to use with Niantic’s Ingress, and will arrive for all of its other games this summer. It’s worth noting that Campfire is not an in-app experience/plugin for games like Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom and Ingress, and rather, a companion app like Discord, but developed by Niantic.

With Campfire, Niantic wants to give its “community a new tool to discover the joy of real-world gameplay, meetups, and events, and to provide a way for people to discover new creations designed to make the real-world a more magical and entertaining place.”

We aren’t entirely sure when the companion app will be available for other Niantic titles, though it will be some time this summer.

Image credit: Niantic

Source: Niantic

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Mobile Syrup

Niantic’s next original AR game Peridot has players raising cute and colourful creatures

Niantic has revealed its next mobile game, Peridot. The augmented reality (AR) title will enter a soft-launch phase on iOS and Android soon.

Revealed via a quick teaser, Niantic showed off a few of the creatures found in Peridot. Many of them share similarities to Pokémon and the game itself looks very much like what we’ve come to expect from Niantic.

Players collect creatures and raise them as their own. These creatures as referred to as Peridots and each have their own individual personality traits. Players must identify their likes and dislikes before breeding them with other Peridots. This then creates new generations of creatures to interact with.

In some ways, Pokémon Go’s DNA is very apparent here. However, there doesn’t seem to be an emphasis on catching Peridots. Instead, gameplay traits from Tamogatchi or Pikmin seem to be more present in the title. Players must play with their Peridots and feed them. Peridots are also able to learn new tricks along the way.

As Peridots are captured, each one is catalogued in the game. Once different species are bred, those new archetypes are discovered and shared in the game’s catalogue of creatures.

As an AR game, players can use their iOS and Android devices to bring their Peridots with them on the go. You’ll be able to take pictures and videos of the creatues in the real world using the game’s AR capabilities.

As for how the game’s UI looks or how players capture Peridots, those questions remain unanswered. Given Niantic’s previous work, it’s safe to assume that there will be a fairly streamlined gameplay loop. Peridot looks to be a title geared towards players of all ages and its gameplay will likely reflect that.

Niantic has opened up pre-registration to players. Those who want to stay up to date on the Peridot development and release can find out more on the website.

The studio says that Peridot’s soft launch will be limited to specific markets, but didn’t reveal launch regions.

Image credit: Niantic

Source: Niantic

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Mobile Syrup

Niantic to disable access to Pokémon Go and more in Russia

Niantic, the American developer behind popular titles like Pokémon Go, Ingress, and Pikmin Bloom is now taking action against Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.

The three above-mentioned games are no longer available for download in Russia and Belarus, and those who already have the games will soon be unable to access them, according to Niantic’s Tweet dated March 10th.

The move from Niantic comes soon after other video game developers and publishers restricted the Russian market in some capacity. Sony announced that it is suspending the sale of its consoles and software in Russia, along with shutting down its PlayStation Store for those accessing it from the nation. Whereas EA removed all Russian club and International teams from its FIFA and NHL titles along with ceasing all sales in Russia and Belarus, including games, content and even including virtual currency bundles.

Check out this roundup of all big tech/social media sanctions against Russia to read what other game developers/publishers like the Montreuil, France-based Ubisoft and the Warsaw, Poland-based CD Projekt Red are implementing.

Source: @NianticLabs

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Mobile Syrup

Pokémon Go December 2021 Community Day event details revealed

Niantic has announced more details surrounding its upcoming December Pokémon Go event. This information comes shortly after Pokémon Go’s ‘Community Day’ for November, which was held on Sunday, November 21st.

Pokémon Go’s Community Day for December kicks off on the 18th and will conclude the following day on the 19th. Upon the start of the event, trainers will have a chance to encounter a wide selection of Pokémon in the wild. Additionally, players have a chance to hatch all Pokémon featured throughout the Community Days across 2020 via the 2km eggs.

The breakdown of which Pokémon will be available across both days is as followed.

Pokémon available on December 18:

Fletchling
Gible
Machop
Roselia
Snivy
Swablu

Pokémon available on December 19:

Duskull
Eevee
Oshawott
Shinx
Tepig

Pokémon available by hatching 2km eggs:

Abra
Budew
Charmander
Elekid
Gastly
Magby
Magikarp
Piplup
Porygon
Rhyhorn
Seedot
Weedle

Finally, the Pokémon that are available to catch through raid events have also been revealed. Many of the featured Pokémon are the same as those available through hatching eggs, with rare exceptions.

Raid Pokémon

Abra
Charmander
Electabuzz
Gastly
Magmar
Magikarp
Piplup
Porygon
Rhyhorn
Seedot
Weedle

Community Day event moves will also be available. Evolve any of the featured Pokémon and players will be able to learn event moves from previous Community Days across 2020 and 2021.

Pokémon GO players were offered the chance to catch a Shinx, Luxio, and Luxray during November’s Community Day.

Image credit: Niantic

Via: CNET