Games like Pokémon GO aren’t for anyone, but I’ve always quietly admired Niantic’s marriage of a popular IP, AR tech and incentive design. Sure, its grindy in the way the worst F2P games could often be, but I explored so many parks and places I’d never seen before when I dabbled in Pokémon GO a few years ago, and the game in general never made me feel pressured into spending money. Plus, you know, Pokémon!
Niantic’s latest foray into IP-based AR will be Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. You get to rock around being a wizard, basically, which I imagine is going to make some people unreasonably happy come the end of the week as the developer have just announced that the magic will start on Friday, June 21st, 2019. For US and UK-based gamers, that is.
We will be joining the ranks of the Australians and New Zealanders who’ve already been enjoying a soft-launch period for a while, and more regions are due to come online although we don’t have any details on the timetable.
Harry Potter is not my favourite IP – I think I’m actually a bit more excited about the Minecraft one – but I’ll probably jump into this for some tinkering on my shiny new Pixel 3XL, and you can expect more coverage from us going forward as this is something we want to keep on top of, at least for the short-term.
Harry Potter is due for release at the end of this week on iOS & Android.