It’s exhausting to think about a world with out Pokemon Go, however its developer Niantic simply celebrated its fifth anniversary. Earlier at present, John Hanke, the CEO of Niantic, celebrated the corporate’s fifth anniversary with a letter trying again on the firm’s milestones thus far together with its upcoming plans for the longer term. Of observe – Hanke famous that Niantic is difficult at work constructing the world’s largest repository of 3D photographs of real-world locations, with AR scans made from over 635,000 completely different actual world websites. “So a lot has modified,” Hanke wrote. “We’ve grown up loads. Yet once I look again on the final 5 years and every part we’ve executed to get to this second, it strikes me that the Niantic we all know at present, nonetheless completely different it’d look, has stored a lot of its DNA. What stays on the coronary heart of why we do what we do is our perception that know-how—augmented actuality, particularly—could make a profound constructive affect on the world.”
Niantic Labs initially launched in 2010 as an “inside startup” inside Google that utilized Google Maps and customers to construct a database cataloging fascinating locations all over the world. After designing the Field Trip app, Niantic launched its first game Ingress, which pitted two international groups towards one another to assert in-game Portals that coincided with actual world places. After Niantic spun off from Google, it introduced improvement of Pokemon Go, a game that targeted on “catching Pokemon” in the true world. When Pokemon Go grew to become a large hit (crashing Niantic’s servers repeatedly within the course of), Niantic grew to become a family identify. While its follow-up Harry Potter: Wizards Unite hasn’t loved the identical reputation as Pokemon Go, the corporate remains to be estimated to be making tens of millions of {dollars} in in-game income per thirty days.
In addition to its lofty AR plans, Niantic can also be creating CATAN: World Explorers, a brand new cellular game that makes use of Niantic’s tried and true mixture of actual world places and in-game play to show your entire world into a large game of Settlers of Catan. No launch date has been introduced for CATAN: World Explorers.
You can learn Hanke’s full letter on Niantic’s webpage.
