Josh Hendrickson
Augmented Reality games are on the rise, and Pokémon Go is undoubtedly one of the most popular entries in the genre. But phone AR games only giving a tiny window into an augmented world. What if you could play on some smart glasses? Niantic teased something like that today on Twitter.
To be clear, we don’t know what the Niantic device does. John Hanke, CEO of Niantic (makers Pokémon Go, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, and more), sent out a tweet today teasing what looks to be a pair of smart glasses. You can see the image above, and they look somewhat similar to other recent smart glass entries like those from North and Google.
Exciting to see the progress we’re making to enable new kinds of devices that leverage our platform… pic.twitter.com/yYglk4q89G
— John Hanke (@johnhanke) March 29, 2021
Add in the CEO’s words, “Exciting to see the progress we’re making to enable new kinds of devices that leverage our platform…” and the idea is compelling. Niantic recently showed off a test version of Pokémon Go running on a HoloLens (before that event devolved into a VR version of Burning Man). But most smart glasses setups don’t give a full world view like HoloLens.
We don’t know if Niantic is making the device or working with another company. But Razer already wants in on the action. Its CEO (Min-Liang Tan) replied on Twitter to ask about working up a collaboration. Of course, that request did allow Tan to mention Razer’s new Anzu smart glasses—though those are for playing music and not AR. Make of that what you will.
In the meantime, we’re left wonder—would you buy a pair of smart glasses to play Pokémon Go or Wizards Unite?
