Pokémon Go dev acquires AR company Escher Reality

Pokémon Go developer Niantic has bought an AR company called Escher Reality.

In a post on the official blog, Niantic founder and CEO John Hanke said: “The addition of the Escher AR technology is incredibly exciting to us at Niantic as it significantly accelerates our work on persistent, shared AR as part of the Niantic real-world application platform.”

Niantic welcomed the Escher Reality co-founders Ross Finman and Diana Hu, and their team:

“Escher’s innovations focus on exploring the intersection of digital and physical worlds, augmented reality (AR), and computer vision. Escher’s technology helps to build persistent, cross platform, multi-user experiences.

 

The addition of the Escher AR technology is incredibly exciting to us at Niantic as it significantly accelerates our work on persistent, shared AR as part of the Niantic real-world application platform. It’s our intention to make our cross-platform AR technology available more widely to developers later this year. Stay tuned for information on developer availability.”

Whether or not this will have any bearing on Pokémon Go has yet to be seen. Last year Niantic added an enhanced AR mode for Apple users; perhaps more updates will follow.

---

Also on Thumbsticks

• Kaz Hirai stepping down as Sony CEO
• Toy-Con Garage lets you make your own Nintendo Labo creations
• Latest PUBG patch looks to tweak Miramar map, squash bugs