Pokemon Go Developer Niantic Announces Harry Potter AR Game (Updated)

Update: Niantic has confirmed the existence of their Harry Potter AR game, titled Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. The developer detailed the game in a statement:

We’re incredibly excited to announce this next step in the evolution of AR mobile entertainment. With Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, players that have been dreaming of becoming real life Wizards will finally get the chance to experience J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World. Players will learn spells, explore their real world neighborhoods and cities to discover & fight legendary beasts and team up with others to take down powerful enemies. We’re thrilled to partner with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and WB Games San Francisco’s development team to bring this magical and beloved series to life in a brand new way. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will leverage the full stack of the Niantic Platform while also providing an opportunity to pioneer all new technology and gameplay mechanics.

Original Story: Niantic Labs achieved a crazy amount of success with Pokemon Go, their augmented reality mobile game based on the popular videogame series. Upon its release, the game found its way into people’s everyday lives, and was a significant, if but brief, pop-culture phenomenon. Per Tech Crunch, it appears as though Niantic is hoping that lightning will strike twice, reportedly developing a similar game based on the popular Harry Potter wizarding world.

Titled Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, this AR game is said to release sometime in 2018. A similar rumor last year was thought to be a false alarm at the time, though Niantic did acknowledge that the company had the rights to create such a game. According to Tech Crunch, the game does indeed exist, although Niantic has yet to publicly comment on the news thus far.

Expect such a game to take advantage of the location database from Niantic’s game Ingress and its follow-up Pokemon Go. No details for the gameplay are available as of yet, but we imagine that it would replace Pokemon battles with wizarding duels, encouraging players to explore their own environments and meet up with fellow players in certain locations.

Pokemon Go is still very much active, with a recent Halloween update beginning to roll out some new third-generation Pokemon.