Weekend Thinking: Pokemon Go Is The Future. Seriously.
You’ve heard of Pokemon Go right?
Of course you have, unless you’ve lived in a WiFi-free cave for the past week. Stories of the popular mobile game have been flooding news sites and dominating social media.
It uses augmented reality (AR) and GPS technology to let players interact with Pokemon characters in the real world, viewed through the screens of their smartphones.
It’s blending the virtual and real world, making often-sedentary gamers emerge from their homes and play outside.
It’s not officially available in Canada, but the workaround to download it is apparently pretty easy, as there are reports of dozens of Pokemon Go players swarming locations in New Brunswick hunting for Pidgetto and other characters.
In just one week it already has more users than the wildly popular dating app Tinder, and is closing in fast on Twitter. While the game was actually produced by Google spinoff company Niantic (whose founders led the development of Google Maps), its success has added billions to Nintendo’s market cap.
While it’s easy to dismiss Pokemon Go as a flash in the pan, a novelty of new technology melded with nostalgia for a much-loved game, the reality is much different.
Nintendo Go is a precursor of what’s to come.
Chris Dixon, a venture capitalist with the influential firm Andreessen Horowitz likes to say that, “the next big thing will start out looking like a toy.” So those kids, and a lot of not-at-all-kids, obsessing about Pokemon Go this week are a vision of the future, not an aberration.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that, “immersive augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people.”
It’s going to happen in multiple ways, but, as we’re seeing with Pokemon Go, it’s starting with smartphones.
Google is developing Tango as a platform that will let smartphones or tablets use GPS or other signals to recognize a user’s location. Think of it as Google Maps on steroids. It will make it easy and intuitive for someone to interact with geographically relevant virtual objects and information on their personal device. Google will release the first Tango-enabled smartphone from Lenovo later this summer.
There have been no shortage of false starts with augmented reality and virtual reality, but now things are getting real. That creates countless opportunities for those that can move quickly to take advantage of the alignment of technologies.
Halifax-based Current Studios is already using the creative opportunities presented by AR, working with some of the biggest brands in the world on AR-related marketing programs.
So take a moment to consider those people wandering the streets glued to their smartphones in hot pursuit of brightly colored cartoon characters.
You’re seeing the future.