
Niantic Spatial, the new name for Pokemon GO developer Niantic after it sold off its games to Savvy Games’ Scopely and laid off some staff after raking in nearly $4B, has announced that it will be lending its augmented reality tech to Kojima Productions to create an all-new AR game that sounds a lot like Niantic’s past MMOARG projects, including Ingress and POGO.
Like most everything else Hideo Kojima initially announces, this new title is heavy on promise and light on information. “I can’t really speak about details yet but, if you’re climbing a mountain… there’s still entertainment there,” Kojima teased in the new reveal. “It’s like the real Death Stranding in the real world, and you can connect with people, or you can connect with the actual environment there in your city.”
A follow-up press release was similarly vague, remarking how this project is “a bold expansion into new forms of media beyond traditional gaming” for Kojima Productions and a way for Niantic Spatial to expand on “the potential of geospatial AI technology to transform how people and machines understand and interact with the physical world” – which one could perhaps absorb as the company seeking more player data to feed its AI ambitions.
Beyond the fact that this is a thing and a flashy teaser trailer waiting below, that’s all we’re getting about this project – that means there’s no name, no gameplay details, and no release timing. But hey, Kojima is doing AR things and that’s probably going to perk up some gamers’ ears.
sources: press release, IGN