{"id":14582,"date":"2021-04-11T16:54:27","date_gmt":"2021-04-11T23:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/?p=14582"},"modified":"2021-04-12T08:58:15","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T15:58:15","slug":"niantic-sneaks-5g-ar-urban-legends-what-does-it-all-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/11\/niantic-sneaks-5g-ar-urban-legends-what-does-it-all-mean\/","title":{"rendered":"Niantic sneaks 5G AR &#8220;Urban Legends&#8221;; what does it all mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>&#8220;&#8216;Augmented Reality: A Land Of Contrasts.&#8217; In this essay, I will&#8230;&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, no, not really, but let me highlight some interesting mixed signals. (It&#8217;s worth noting that these are strictly my opinions, not those of any current or past employer.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pok\u00e9mon Go debuted almost exactly 5 years ago, and last year, even amidst a global pandemic that largely immobilized people, it generated its best revenue ever\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/sci-tech\/technology\/pokmon-go-earns-1-billion-revenue-in-2020-alone\/article33021702.ece#:~:text=Pok%C3%A9mon%20GO's%20revenue%20reached%20%241,app%20analytics%20firm%20Sensor%20Tower.\">more than a billion dollars<\/a> in just the first 10 months of the year, bringing its then-total to more than $4 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Having said that&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>In the five years since its launch, <strong>what other location-based AR games<\/strong> (or AR games, period) have you seen really take off? Even with triple-A characters &amp; brands, Niantic&#8217;s own Harry Potter title made a far smaller splash, and Minecraft Earth (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/2019-06-03-minecraft-earth-gameplay-apple.html\">hyped extensively<\/a> at an Apple keynote event) <a href=\"https:\/\/wersm.com\/microsoft-is-shutting-down-minecraft-earth\/#:~:text=Microsoft%20has%20announced%20it's%20shutting,update%20went%20live%20last%20week.\">is being shut down<\/a>.<\/li><li>When I launched Pok\u00e9mon Go last year (for the first time in years), I noticed that the only apparent change since launch was that <strong>AR now defaults to <em>off<\/em><\/strong>. That is, Niantic apparently decided that monster-catching was easier, more fun, and\/or less resource-intensive when done in isolation, with no camera overlay.<\/li><li>The gameplay remains extremely rudimentary\u2014no use (at least that I could see) of fancy SLAM tracking, depth processing, etc., despite Niantic having acquired startups to enable just this sort of thing, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=7ZrmPTPgY3I\">showing demos<\/a> three years ago.<\/li><li>Network providers &amp; handset makers really, <em>really<\/em> want you to want 5G\u2014but I&#8217;ve yet to see it prove to be transformative (even for the <a href=\"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/18\/ar-come-try-new-cars-makeup-in-google-search\/\">cloud-rendered streaming AR<\/a> that my Google team delivered last year). Even when &#8220;real&#8221; 5G is available beyond a couple of urban areas, it&#8217;s hard to imagine a popular title being 5G-exclusive.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/image.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"291\" src=\"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/image-1024x291.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-14585\" srcset=\"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/image-1024x291.png 1024w, http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/image-300x85.png 300w, http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/image-768x218.png 768w, http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/image-1536x436.png 1536w, http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/image-2048x581.png 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>So does this mean I think location-based AR games are doomed? Well, no, as I claim zero prognostication-fu here. I didn&#8217;t see Pok\u00e9mon Go coming, despite my roommate in Nepal (who casually mentioned that he&#8217;d helped found Google Earth\u2014as one does) describing it ahead of launch; and given the way <a href=\"https:\/\/trends.google.com\/trends\/explore?date=today%205-y&amp;geo=US&amp;q=pokemon%20go\">public interest<\/a> in the app dropped after launch (see above), I&#8217;d never have guessed that it would be generating record revenue now\u2014much less during a pandemic!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, who knows: maybe Niantic &amp; its <a href=\"https:\/\/nianticlabs.com\/blog\/niantic-planet-scale-ar-alliance-5g\/?hl=en\">numerous partners<\/a> will figure out how to recapture lighting in a bottle. Here&#8217;s a taste of how they expect that to look:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Codename: Urban Legends\" width=\"604\" height=\"340\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YAKbe5v689A?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>If I had to bet on someone, though, it&#8217;d be Snap: they&#8217;ve been doing amazing <a href=\"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/14\/snapchats-latest-got-filter-freezes-the-flatiron-building\/\">site-specific AR<\/a> for the last couple of years, and they&#8217;ve prototyped collaborative experiences built on the AR engine that hundreds of millions of people use every day; see below. Game on!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Introducing Local Lenses | Snap Partner Summit 2020\" width=\"604\" height=\"340\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4jA1RM5_WMc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;&#8216;Augmented Reality: A Land Of Contrasts.&#8217; In this essay, I will&#8230;&#8221; Okay, no, not really, but let me highlight some interesting mixed signals. (It&#8217;s worth noting that these are strictly my opinions, not those of any current or past employer.) Pok\u00e9mon Go debuted almost exactly 5 years ago, and last year, even amidst a global [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14582"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14582"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14590,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14582\/revisions\/14590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jnack.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}