Niantic’s highly anticipated Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is set to launch on iOS and Android on June 21st. Niantic is of course the studio behind the impossibly popular Pokémon Go and the hugely influential Ingress. This latest game sees the team bravely bringing its genre-leading augmented reality tech to a very niche series called Harry Potter.
The AR market has been flooded with Pokémon Go copycats since its online discourse-dominating launch that, if you can remember back that far, saw everyone and their nan heading out to nab themselves a Squirtle. Despite its barebones state, Go provided one of the silliest, most memorable summers in recent memory.
The worldwide launch of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite begins this Friday, June 21! Keep your eyes peeled and wand ready for more information as the game goes live in your region soon. #WizardsUnite pic.twitter.com/ckk4s4mi8a
— Harry Potter: Wizards Unite (@HPWizardsUnite) June 19, 2019
Now, it’s highly unlikely that Wizards Unite will be able to pull off anything close to that, but it doesn’t really need to. From what we’ve seen, it’s using the tech foundations of Go and the earlier Ingress to offer something recognisable but obviously evolved.
In fact, our sister site, Pocket Gamer, put out an informative preview for the game back in March, praising it at the time for all the apparent ways it mixes up the Pokémon Go formula. Clearly a lot of time and money has gone into this one, so at the very least we can expect a more substantial and stable game than the launch version of Go.
It’s headed to Android and iOS on June 21st – yes, that’s this Friday. It’ll be free to play, and you can hopefully expect the same sort of unobtrusive monetization seen in the studio’s earlier stuff.
