Last year, Google put out a new augmented reality game known as Ingress. It was in closed beta for quite a while and just hit open beta about a month or so ago. It’ll be leaving beta in December. In Ingress you are basically part of either the Enlightened or Resistance faction going around and claiming portals and linking them together. But there’s also a storyline attached to it. Now while most of us don’t really follow the storyline, it’s still a big part of the game. Niantic Labs will have to wind down their storyline eventually. But it looks like that won’t be the end of the developer’s augmented reality efforts.
Niantic spoke with The Vergethis morning about the fact that they are working on programming kits that would allow coders to build their own games with chat layers, location info and even in-game ads. But you won’t be able to write your own title anytime soon. Niantic says that they have no idea when this will be ready, and the availability may depend on the kind of flexibility that the team wants to offer. But it does sound like Ingress fans, like myself, will have a whole lot more to look forward to soon than just exiting beta or the iOS support. Which I’m not sure if we’re going to see iOS support anytime soon. But then again, Google is pushing all their services onto iOS as well as Android, so who knows.
Ingress has been very popular among the staff here at Android Headlines. There are a number of us that play it while we’re out running errands and stuff. Although it’s kind of hard since most of us work from home. It’s still a great game. However, I still think this is Google’s master plan at getting more data for street view on their Google Maps. Sounds plausible right? So what does everyone think about this news from Niantic? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.