It's already been a banner year for mergers and acquisitions in the augmented reality industry, with WaveOptics and Ubiquity6 among the notable companies acquired. Two of the more active M&A players, Snap and Epic Games, continued their respective buying sprees this week with ...more
If you are an active player of Pokémon GO, you may soon be capturing more than just virtual pocket monsters. When it comes to mapping the world, Niantic does not have the fleet of mapping cars that its former parent company, Google, has at its disposal. But it does have a com ...more
Niantic pioneered location-based augmented reality gaming with Ingress and popularized it with Pokémon Go, but others have attempted to replicate the model without reaching the level of success that Niantic has garnered. Cable network AMC may have cracked Niantic's formula wi ...more
A scary piece of malware just got a lot more terrifying this week. Security firm Comodo reports that "Tordow," a banking Trojan first uncovered in September 2016, received a massive update this December. The new "Tordow 2.0" hack stands out among other types of malware becaus ...more
A Seattle development team is putting the "ARRRR" in AR with the maiden voyage of Captain Blimey, an augmented reality game for iOS and Android devices that puts a pirate premise on Pokémon GO. Instead of stalking make-believe monsters, players in Captain Blimey hunt for trea ...more
The long-awaited augmented reality game based on the Harry Potter franchise from Pokémon GO masterminds Niantic is closer to release, as the developer has begun public beta testing of the app. On Tuesday, the beta version of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, built in partnership w ...more
If you're like me, then you're rarely just watching TV. You're probably also simultaneously following reactions on Twitter during a live airing of The Walking Dead. Or perhaps you're checking your fantasy football scores while a real game is in progress. Or you might just have ...more
April Fool's has come early, with an update for Google's Maps application for both Android and iOS that's geared towards finding their next big hire: Pokémon Master. While we've been been collecting some of our favorite April Fool's Day Pranks to pull on your friends, co-work ...more
Nintendo may be developing cases that'll turn your iPhone into a gaming device like the Game Boy, but until something materializes there, you're stuck with cheap knockoffs on Amazon or a real Game Boy or Game Boy Color. But there's something else you can do to play eight-bit N ...more
Players who have stuck around with location-based game Jurassic World Alive just got a new treat that makes the augmented reality experience even more fun. Available in an update (version 1.8) of the app via the App Store and Google Play, the game gains a new feature called S ...more
A side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic is that small businesses are suffering from forced closures and social distancing, but game developer Niantic has a solution. In addition to donating proceeds from Pokémon GO Fest ticket sales (at least $5 million) to fund projects from ...more
While a release date for Harry Potter: Wizards Unite has not yet materialized, co-developers Niantic and WB Games have finally released gameplay footage and an in-depth game description to whet the appetites of eager Harry Potter fans. In addition to the reveal of gameplay fo ...more
For those who thought the action in Pokémon Go was a bit too pedestrian, Father.io wants to recruit you for a multi-player, first-person shooter that unfolds on the streets of your own city. Through a mobile app, available now on the App Store and Google Play, and a pocket-si ...more
It looks like Pokémon GO players may get a surprise gift from the game's developer, Niantic, this holiday season. After teasing the arrival of Buddy Adventure last month, Niantic revealed on Tuesday that the new interactive mode for its blockbuster game will arrive by 2020. A ...more
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite has gained quite the fan base since its launch, but not without a few bumps along the way. Niantic, the game's developer, has a long-running history with trying to block all root users on Android. The methods will vary for each game, but this time a ...more
At long last, the magical world of Harry Potter has received a mobile game worthy of its name. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is the game in question, and is set to touch down worldwide on June 21, 2019. For the longest time, however, the game has been available as a soft launche ...more
We continue to field stories underscoring the strong trends of Investment in augmented reality in various sectors. This week, one company strengthens their offerings to the enterprise sector, while two other companies capitalize on the promise presented by augmented reality to ...more
Augmented reality allows for all kinds of experiences to happen just about anywhere, and that creates some incredible potential for entertainment. While games like Pokémon GO take you out into the world, one crowd-funded game wants to keep you inside—to scare the crap out of y ...more
The premise of Jurassic World revolves around splicing genes to create new dinosaurs, so it is fitting that the location-based AR game is a clone of Pokémon GO merged with the DNA of the Jurassic Park franchise. Hatching now in the App Store and Google Play, Jurassic World Al ...more
The '90s were a great decade to be alive. Before the internet became a high-availability service, we were untethered from the bombardment of media present in today's culture. Children ran through the streets with levels of physical exertion beyond what's required to capture fi ...more
Smartphone games are getting pretty good these days, but they still can't beat the retro appeal of a good emulator. I mean, who wouldn't want to have their all-time favorite console and arcade games tucked neatly in their front pocket? Classics ranging from Super Mario Bros. t ...more
A new study published by American University demonstrates how Pokémon GO and other augmented reality games can help city governments bring communities closer together. An ongoing partnership between Pokémon GO developer Niantic and the community investment program of the John ...more
After more than a year of teasing and testing, Niantic and Warner Bros. are finally ready to release Harry Potter: Wizards Unite to muggles of the world. Niantic has announced that the game will launch on Friday, June 21 starting with players in the US and UK, with other regi ...more
After a relatively short beta-testing period, Pokémon Go is now rolling out to Android and iOS devices right now. If you want to catch 'em all in the real world, your wait is over. Video: . By now most of us know the details of the highly-anticipated, real-world Pokémon advent ...more
A little over a year after emerging from stealth, augmented reality gaming startup Illumix has launched its first title using a familiar formula, but with a new twist. On Monday, the company, working in partnership with Scott Games, launched Five Nights at Freddy's AR Special ...more
Ever since the announcement of The Walking Dead: Our World game last fall, publisher AMC and developer Next Games have been quiet about the title. Almost too quiet. That silence has now been shattered with the release of a gameplay trailer (see bottom of this page) for the ga ...more
Two of the three entities behind Pokemon GO, the reigning champion in mobile augmented reality gaming, are joining forces again to see if lightning can strike more than once. This week, AR developer Niantic and gaming giant Nintendo announced a partnership that will see a ser ...more
The makers of arguably the two most important mobile AR apps, Niantic and Snap, both had good news this week, with the former preparing to replicate its success with Pokémon GO for another franchise and the latter notching another popular augmented reality Lens for Snapchat. ...more
Players of Pokémon GO on Android now have a reason to turn on AR mode with the release of AR+ support via ARCore. Pokémon GO enthusiasts on iOS have had access to AR+ mode on ARKit-compatible iPhones and iPads (yes, I can attest to playing the game on a tablet, don't @ me) si ...more
Well, no one ever thinks of the BlackBerry as a gaming platform, but with this cool little java based app, called MeBoy, you can run Gameboy Advanced ROMS on your BlackBerry smartphone. Try it now and see all that glorious duotone color right in the palm of your hands! So give ...more
Video game makers have never had great name recognition amongst the American public. Shigeru Miyamoto, Cliff Bleszinski, and Will Wright are names most Americans can't be bothered to remember, whatever their contribution to games have been. Most people are familiar with their ...more
You can debate the theory of evolution all you want, but there's no debating that this video will teach you how to evolve Gligar in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl version. If you are playing this version of Pokemon, you've got to see this video.
Boston.com's The Big Picture posts 2009's most amazing Guinness World Record holders. My favorite fanatics below. "A base jumper leaps backwards off the Menara Kuala Lumpur Tower, Malaysia, Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009. A group of base jumpers were attempting to set a Guinness Wo ...more
Today concludes our Gamer's Guide to Video Game Software (see Part 1 & Part 2). In our final installment, we will shift away from engines toward video games that allow you to make your own games within them. Many games have featured level editors that allow users to create th ...more
Where's you Espeon? If you haven't added that Pokemon to your collection yet, check out this video and learn what to do to get him. Anyone playing Pokemon Diamond and Pearl version should watch this video to learn how to get Espeon.
Whether you're riding the subway on your way home from work, or stuck in the backseat of the car on a long road trip, there are times when you need to entertain yourself without a mobile data connection. A good mobile game would pass the time perfectly, but not every game work ...more
We've already shown you our favorite new action games that have come out this year, but now it's time to share our all-time top ten list. These games are available for both Android and iPhone, they don't have intrusive ads or freemium schemes, and most importantly, they're all ...more
How do you begin to explain the nostalgia that's felt when you play a game from your childhood? You can't. The only thing that will alleviate this feeling is experiencing it again. We've already shown you how to play PlayStation 1 and Nintendo 64 games on your Nexus 7, but th ...more
One of the standout features of the OnePlus 7 Pro is the 90 Hz display. A higher refresh rate means smoother gameplay for all your favorite games, which is precisely what you'd want out of your gaming experience. However, not all games play nicely with these higher refresh rat ...more
It seems like everyone is getting in shape these days (or at least trying to improve their fitness), and as a result, there's an endless supply of fitness trackers and smartwatches hitting the market. This is all very wonderful, unless of course, you're broke and can barely af ...more
There are so many great apps in the Google Play Store that it's become the number one app marketplace in the world. Here at Gadget Hacks we love apps and were excited to hear that the Google Play Store held an awards ceremony to celebrate some of the best apps of the year. Bu ...more
Nintendo fans rejoice! Not only can you play classic NES games on your iPad or iPhone without jailbreaking, you can play Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Color games. And that's not it. Now, thanks to @angelXwind, we can add Nintendo DS to our list of non-jailbreak emulators for ...more
Following in the augmented reality footsteps of Pokémon GO, Universal Studios has decided to give us an AR version of Jurassic World. The new game is called "Jurassic World Alive," and while the trailer for the game doesn't show any actual gameplay, the cinematic approach to ...more
If we were to assign a theme for the 2019 edition of the Next Reality 30 (NR30), it might be something along the lines of, "What have you done for me lately?" Many of the top names in the industry from the 2018 edition remain the same, but their positions have shuffled. The p ...more
Niantic's most successful app, Pokémon GO, has become the first app to integrate the company's Real World Platform, the developer's AR cloud technology that enables multiplayer AR, persistent content, and occlusion with physical objects. "RAD!" you say to yourself. "Now Pikac ...more
Contrary to popular belief, augmented reality apps have been available for a while now. I remember using the Layar app (still available for iOS and Android) to explore nearby businesses and landmarks with varying success via an early-generation Android handset. It would be ha ...more
This week, augmented reality spawns in the world of online role-playing games with a soft launch down under from an indie game developer. Meanwhile, in Asia, another startup wins a coveted award for its AR headset. Finally, an established player in the mobile AR touches up its ...more
If you've played the game Portal by Valve before, you've most likely popped one portal onto the ceiling and another directly below it on the floor, dropped your Companion Cube in, and then watched it fall forever. Well, now it has been done in real life, in an actual hallway, ...more
Because our smartphones are ever present, frequently used apps become the topic of conversation in social situations. This often leads to sharing app links via messages, either by copying/pasting an app's URL or sending it through the sharing menu. However, there's another way ...more
The App Store has been around for almost 14 years now, and during that time, we must have seen over a million games come and go and stay and expand. But only a tiny fraction of those games have become blockbuster sensations because of the mighty App Store's reach on iPhone and ...more
After parting ways with Papa John's, the National Football League has drafted Pizza Hut as its official pizza purveyor, and the company has hit the field with an augmented reality game to entertain hungry football fans. After scanning specially marked pizza boxes using the Be ...more
One of the most popular mobile games out there for kids has added an augmented reality mode that brings the titular character into the real world. An update of Nickelodeon's Sky Whale, available now on the App Store and Google Play renders the game's oceanic environment and i ...more
Just about anyone who's been gaming for a long time occasionally feels nostalgic for the simpler consoles of yesteryear. I don't play much anymore, but my grandmother (yes, grandmother) got me started on NES when I was about three years old, and most days I'd still take that o ...more
As if its users weren't already having enough fun with dancing hot dogs and face effects, Snapchat is upping the ante with a new kind of shared augmented reality content. Called Snappables, the interactive Lenses include games that users can play with facial expressions and h ...more
Solving long and extensively complicated equations in grade school was tough to do by hand. Keeping track of which part of the equation to solve first took time, training, and lots of bad grades. As soon as middle school began, our dependance on calculators grew and difficult ...more
The hunt for the mixed reality use-case that wins over consumers' hearts and creates a critical mass is a problem every developer would love to solve. Not only would they find themselves rich and famous seemingly overnight, but they would also end up making one of the various ...more
The latest video game developer to hit the scene is a hotel chain, and they're offering big prizes for high-scorers. That's right, the W Hotels released a free game that can be played on your desktop, tablet, or smartphone called Belle the Bear. A Frogger-style game, Belle th ...more
As if teasing its own smartglasses weren't enough, augmented reality gaming developer Niantic gave gamers a glimpse of how 5G speeds can revolutionize how they play mobile games in the near future. This week, the company revealed Codename: Urban Legends, a demo game built wit ...more
After three years and change, no one seems to be able to knock Pokémon GO off its augmented reality throne. Zombies, dinosaurs, and ghosts have all met defeat at the hands of the pocket monsters. Heck, not even the world's most popular wizard and Pokémon GO's developer can rep ...more
Pokémon, Google, and augmented reality go together like wasabi, soy, and ginger, and the trio has come together again for the release of the latest game from the Pokémon universe. As Nintendo released the eagerly-anticipated games Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield for the Swit ...more