Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

A Year After 'Pokemon Go', Where Are the Augmented-Reality Hits? (theaustralian.com.au)

Posted by msmash on from the reality-check dept.

A year after "Pokemon Go" prompted throngs of people to scour parks and streets for monsters visible only through smartphones, hit games made with augmented reality are rarer than a Snorlax. From a report: In fact, analysts say, the monster-hunting blockbuster drove only a brief spike in games using the nascent technology, which blends digital images with a person's view of the real world. That is surprising, considering the ubiquity of screenshots showing Pokemon invading players' work desks, kitchen counters and other locations of everyday life. "Pokemon Go" reached $1 billion in revenue globally just seven months after its release last July -- faster than any other mobile game, including Activision Blizzard's "Candy Crush Saga," according to App Annie. There are thousands of augmented-reality games among the millions of apps in the Apple and Alphabet stores. None, though, has come close to the success of "Pokemon Go." There are several reasons why, industry observers say. One is that the allure of "Pokemon Go" wasn't primarily its augmented reality. While the game's digital monsters materialise as if in the real world, they don't interact with it. A Snorlax might appear next to a tree, but the catlike creature won't peek from behind it. Many players who took up hunting the monsters ended up turning off the augmented-reality feature.

10 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Simple reason by cyber-vandal · · Score: 2

    The AR on Pokémon Go makes it harder to play so it gets turned off. I imagine the other AR games suffer similar issues.

  2. Ghost Busters GO by Script+Cat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Where is it. It's the natural fit for this technology but no one is ever going to make it.

    1. Re:Ghost Busters GO by enjar · · Score: 2

      People will stop playing when crossing the streams bricks their phone. Samsung phone owners will stop playing when it sets their phone on fire.

  3. You don't understand Pokemon Go or AR by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I played Pokemon Go for a while after it first came out because I wanted to understand it.

    The main thing to know is : Pokemon go IS NOT AN AR APP.

    It's merely an image of a pokemon that is overlaid on live video, where the image moves somewhat in accordance with rotation of the phone. What it does NOT do is track with real world objects at all well or even try to make any sense of where the pokemon will be placed. What MOST PG players did after a short time was turn off the video so the pokemon would not shift with device rotation... so then it wasn't even FauxAR. It wasn't the AR aspect that made PokemonGo popular at all, even though it seemed like it at first from the outside - it was really traditional game mechanics that made it work, if anything the hook was the tie to real-world physical locations.

    What makes an AR app AR, is that it truly augments reality with realistic presence in the scene.

    The reason you haven't seen many such apps is because doing a good job of that has been tricky - or it was until ARKit was delivered by Apple...

    Expect an absolute FLOOD of AR games coming with iOS 11. Literally tens of thousands, not even joking. As you can imagine, it's going to be rough to find something of quality...

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  4. Pokemon Go was a unicorn by SCVonSteroids · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It was a nostalgic fad. The game in question sucked.

    --
    I tend to rant.
    1. Re:Pokemon Go was a unicorn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yes, it was a unicorn. Which precisely is why others haven't tried to piggyback off it's success. As everyone knows - You Never play Leapfrog with a Unicorn.

    2. Re:Pokemon Go was a unicorn by sexconker · · Score: 2

      Concerned parents and groups never raised such "issues". Such features were never implemented or even announced. Further, Niantic makes the game, not Nintendo or The Pokemon Company. They merely licensed the right to make the game to Niantic, which is an offshoot of Google. Pokemon Go is little more than a skin of Ingress.

  5. Working link to ARKit examples by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here's the working link to see some real-world ARKit examples that people have been working on.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  6. Just waiting for a DnD AR game by Vermonter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The minute you get a dungeons and dragons style game, or some similar type of RPG, people will be all over it. Hunting for weapons, armor, or items, having random game generated dungeons that have varying minimum level requirements, and/or possible minimum party size, have classes that can be used to solo or have a party dynamic as well, and you will see the next big hit in VR gaming.

  7. Pokemon GO is about being social in my area... by Pezbian · · Score: 2

    In my Small-City (~20,000), Pokemon GO injected a lot of life into those who avoid the Church/Bar social-focus of the past... since-forever.

    Last year, you could see 8-year-olds out with their parents at 2AM and strike up a (really freaking cool) conversation with a 50+ OrbitalATK Engineer a few minutes later and have a group of 30+ people ignoring Pokemon and learning about Outer Space before departing to catch a Pikachu.

    Nothing has ever achieved such an indelible mark in my locale. After Niantic decided to conduct matters in a better manner, this has only increased.

    --
    In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.