Niantic's 'Ingress' To Receive HUGE Update
Without "Ingress," there would be no "Pokemon GO" and despite the widespread success of its successor, Niantic hasn't forgotten the original location-based adventure game. The developer has announced a huge update to the game slated for 2018 which will have big implications not just for itself but Niantic's other augmented reality titles.
The AR game is Niantic's own IP (intellectual property) and features a world where players team up and take on rival groups. It basically laid the groundwork for both the structure and technology used by "Pokemon GO." They are far from similar though as the game's darker sci-fi theme of tapping into futuristic technology to possibly contact aliens is a far cry from the bright and colorful world of its successor.
With the success of its joint venture with the Pokemon Company, however, Niantic shifted considerable resources away from 'Ingress' which, compared to GO's 750 million downloads, only clocked around 20 million four years since its release. Now, however, Niantic is finally in a position to return to fully supporting the game and have announced a grand rework of the title called "Ingress Prime."
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"We took people and some of our attention off of 'Ingress' after the 'Pokémon GO' launch, just because that game was going so strong that we had to beef up all aspects of it," Niantic CEO John Hanke told The Verge. "We haven't been able to give the community much in terms of new features for the past year. Luckily the community has stayed with us and remained strong, but we're excited now to have a fully-staffed team on 'Ingress.'"
The game will play mostly the same except with upgraded visuals and a new angle of storytelling which should be enough for even veteran players to appreciate. "Ingress Prime" will also tap into recently released Google's ARCore and Apple's ARKit to provide the best augmented-reality experience possible for its players.
There is a possibility that "Ingress Prime" will once again serve as a testing ground for new technologies that will later be implemented on "Pokemon GO" and future Niantic games. It's definitely a safer space to test out new tech given that it's their own IP at stake, not The Pokemon Company's or as in the case of their upcoming "Harry Potter: Wizards Unite," Warner Bros.
