To own an AR future, Niantic wants to build a smarter map of the world
/Niantic is continuing to bet heavily on the idea that it knows where consumer computing is headed, namely toward augmented reality.
The game development startup behind Pokémon GO has some good company with companies like Apple, Facebook and Snap making similar bets, but stakes are high for the studio that hopes it can build an early advantage in foundational AR infrastructure and bring third-party developers onboard, edging out efforts from companies that are quite a bit larger.
Niantic’s experiments are still being bankrolled by their 2016 first-party hit Pokémon GO, which SensorTower estimates is having its best year ever in 2020. A report from the firm suggests that the title has pulled in more than $1 billion in revenue since the start of the year, a marked increase since 2019 that might be surprising, given the social effects of a pandemic. Those revenues have allowed Niantic to be one of the more active acquirers in the AR infrastructure space, buying up small buzzy AR startups like Escher Reality, Matrix Mill and, most recently, 6D.ai.