Hacker News Reader

Comment by p1necone | Hacker News Reader

Pokemon Go was hugely popular, but basically making the same game with less popular brands/new IPs on top of them was never going to work. And that seems like all their other projects were.

Phones still aren't really able to provide a proper immersive AR experience, there's only so much you can do with gamified Google maps.

View on HN

The funny thing is I still think of them as the Ingress company. Pokemon Go was just Ingress with a popular brand slapped on it, and that was enough to put it in the headlines again... once.

pogo did a good job at killing ingress. Then niantic was like oops we forgot about you because you are the bastard child pokemon go is the gifted child. Lets rewrite the client from scratch but completely butcher it from both a UI and UX. Haven't touched it since they forced everyone to the prime client. I was heavily involved in both the local and national scene.

They also made the larger events (anomalies) paid entry, it was free before.

I haven't played Ingress since it was owned by Google. When I stopped allowing Location Services on my phone, Ingress went away with it, unsurprisingly. I did make a lot of friends back then, some of whom I still talk to today.

It was definitely an interesting way to put you on an IRL collision course with other people of similar tech interests.

The original client was a massive burden on the API, and the new client was rewritten to solve that (as far as I know).

Wouldn't be surprised if they butchered it by using react native honestly. They're a skilled team but a lot of the problems I've heard of sound like hybrid dev. issues.

Prime is much better than Classic, way faster to use. Of course it won't work on a 10 year old phone, but that's the nature of things.

Agreed, I actually have never heard of Pokémon Go until late last year, imagine my surprise when I learnt that it's not only hugely popular, but even those who don't usually play games it as well!

The only AR gaming experience that would immersive to me is... VR. Reality just ain't all that.

I disagree. I think the hololens showed that AR can be equally as compelling as VR. Seeing stuff in the real world is really cool, and I imagine multiplayer stuff (like laser tag) could be cool.

The main issue with it was the hilariously small field of view. If they solve that I can imagine it being as popular as VR.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com