Niantic is opening its AR platform so others can make games like Pokémon Go

Niantic Labs, the San Francisco-based game developer responsible for creating the massively successful augmented reality game Pokémon Go, plans to open up the underlying AR platform behind its products to third-party developers. In a meeting with reporters yesterday at its headquarters, CEO John Hanke gave a detailed overview of that technology — what Niantic calls its Real World Platform. It’s the engine behind the AR experiences in Ingress, Pokémon Go, and the upcoming title Harry Potter: Wizards Unite that company is developing alongside Warner Bros. And Niantic says it’s getting better all the time. Niantic introduced its Real World Platform, an AR engine for parsing physical reality Alongside Hanke, other Niantic executives... Continue reading…