Google-owned Niantic recently took to its blog to provide some clues about future plans for three AR titles on Android including the upcoming Ingress Prime, Pokemon Go, and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. However, the most important detail of all might be in Niantic’s choice of words in the announcement itself. In particular, Niantic says that this fall is going to be “exciting” in relation to each of those titles. That seems to indicate that both the two new titles – Ingress Prime and Harry Potter – and the incoming Pokemon changes will be landing within the next couple of months.
The company’s hints about Pokemon GO center are vague but suggests that trainers will soon have “more ways to play together.” Niantic has already been bringing new trading and battle mechanics to the title with some frequency over the past several months. So this may finally be pointing towards the long-requested and more direct player-versus-player battles players have been asking for since the game launched. Although speculative, it’s difficult to imagine what else the company might be bringing in terms of multiplayer experiences. Meanwhile, Niantic has again confirmed that a Harry Potter AR title is still in the cards and is now directing interested Android gamers to an official webpage where they can sign up for notifications about the title as it nears launch. That’s said to be coming ‘soon.’
With that said, Ingress will be undergoing the biggest changes in the near future. Ingress Prime, which is an update to the original title, is currently expected to incorporate the advancements made with Pokemon GO and the Niantic Real World Platform. The update will likely incorporate new anti-cheating mechanisms and other controversial functionality from that other game but will also include streamlined gameplay and graphics, in addition to supporting Google’s ARCore platform. Beyond that, the change will make it easier to translate improvements made to the AR components of one title into the other since they’ll both be based in the same technology. Niantic plans to reveal more information about that and about a recently reported Ingress anime series on Netflix as the launch approaches.
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite