Wizards, Witches and Magic in a New AR Game?!

It’s no secret that when Pokémon was celebrating their 20^th century with the new upcoming Sun and Moon at the time, Niantic Inc. came out with their newest Augmented Reality (AR) game for both Android and iOS called Pokémon GO.
To be honest, the sheer amount of success it gathered on the first few weeks of launch made it not only the most downloaded app in the year of 2016, it also gave a complete new vigour as well as enthusiasm to young and old people around the world. Even still to this day, it is played by people of many ages while not being as many as back then, it has remained a fun game to play. Being able to go outside, meeting new people go on raids just to catch that one special Pokémon in the late evening so the Pokédex was one step closer to be completed.

So, it came as a major surprise when I found out by looking at their website, that they announced in a blog post, are developing a new AR game. The post went as followed:

“We’re incredibly excited to announce this next step in the evolution of AR mobile entertainment. 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.”

The thing that makes this fascinating is as they state, we players have the opportunity to experience magic in a way we dreamed of as children running around the woods or backyards with sticks, imagining how the many spells looked like from the Harry Potter universe by J.K. Rowling. This time however, we can acquire spells, explore the world to discover and fight creatures we all know and love.
What is interesting is, this game sounds to emphasise more on what the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) where we will do as the main character Newt Scamander, try to discover new beasts, fight and maybe even have the chance to help them. Though I would not lie that being able to fight a Dementor with a possibility of a chosen spirit creature that I find to be my guardian shield.

“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.”

It also sounds that Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment will give Niantic full access to the universe of Harry Potter. I can only hope like you that we can either choose our house in the same way we could in Pokémon GO and Ingress. However, it’s possible that it will function the same way as Ingress, since many of its mechanics will function well with how Harry Potter: Wizards Unite can play. Yet use (and therefore expand upon) the location database as it became more precise in Pokémon GO through later development updates.

“We look forward to seeing you outside on your next adventure. Stay tuned to our social channels for updates as we work to bring this game to life.”

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will likely be the name of the game, though I would like it to be a placeholder before finding something a little more catchy. Nevertheless, I’m quite excited to see a new game is coming out from Niantic and I would love to go back into my childhood of being a wizard in the world that was Harry Potter, running around throwing spells and trying to be the very best at Quidditch (which could be a fun minigame to be developed).

If you are interested in reading the whole blog post you can find it here, ‘else you can follow Niantic on their Twitter profile and see when they give out more information about this new game in the making,

 

Yet I’m interested what you guys think about these news, I for one are estatic to see something like this in the works and with the way that Niantic have grown through the development cycle of Pokémon GO, there’s a good chance it won’t be a total failure on launch date in the near future. However, I do have a sneaky suspicion that it will be using lore from the release of Fantastic Beast 2 around November 16, 2017. Do tell me down in the comments about your perspective for this.

Stay Cozy and have a nice day!