To Create Augmented Reality Games, Nintendo partners with Niantic
On Tuesday, Nintendo announced that it is partnering with Pokemon Go app developer Niantic in order to create augmented reality (AR) titles, with an app named Pikmin launching this year. In a recent twitter post by Tatsuo Nomura, the head of Niantic’s Tokyo Studio which read, the app “will make walking more fun with Pikmin. It’s going to be very different from Pokemon Go.”
Nintendo is a Japanese multinational consumer electronics and video game company headquartered in Koyoto, which was founded in 1889 as Nintendo Karuta by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi which originally produced handmade hanafuda playing cards but after venturing into different business lines in 1960s it launched its first video game console, the Color TV-Game in 1977 which gained international recognition and since then it has produced some of the most successful consoles in video game industry.
Niantic is an American software development company based in San Francisco and is best known for developing augmented reality mobile games like, Ingrees, Pokemon Go, and HarryPotter: Wizards Unite, out of which Harry Potter themed App which was developed with Nintendo affiliate The Pokemon Company was not able to freach the heights of Pokemon Go and left Nintendo with only a small portion of revenue. The company was formed as Niantic Labs in 2010 as an internal startup with Google but later became an independent entity in October 2015.
Nintendo’s mobile releases have performed below the expectations and have lagged with the timeframe outlined by the management and so, this partnership of Nintendo with Niantic could give rebirth to Nintendo’s stalled mobile goals after the firm struggled to replicate the appeal of Pokemon Go, that became a social event as gamers spilled onto the streets to “catch” Pokemon using their mobile phones. The companies announced a long-term agreement in Tokyo Tuesday to turn Nintendo content into AR apps, which work by superimposing digital images onto physical world. Niantic’s Tokyo studio, setup in 2018 is developing the first mobile adaptation of the long running Pikmin franchise, in which users’ direct hordes of plant-like Pikmin creatures to complete puzzles which was created by Nintendo’s creative fellow Shigeru Miyamoto in 2001.
The Pikmin app is doubtfully to “set the world on fire like Pokemon did. Every grandparent knows Pokemon, but only gamers know Pikmin,” said Serkan Toto, founder of game industry consultancy kantan games. The firms based on kyoto gaming whose efforts to expand outside console gaming were boosted last week by belated opening of the Super Nintendo World area at Osaka’s Universal Studios Japan theme park.