Pokémon Go and arrival of Mixed Reality

Depending on your perspective you either won’t have time to read this post because you are too busy training your Pokémon at a gym, you are bored by the flood of stories on Pokémon Go or you are scratching your head wondering how on earth this game got so big so quickly.

There is a seemingly endless number of news stories every day tracking the phenomenal rise of Pokémon Go and its cultural impact. It’s the number one downloaded app wherever it launches, it has added billions in value to Nintendo, people have injured themselves playing the game, found bodies while out searching for Pokémon, got mugged at fake Pokestops and more. What cannot be denied is that the game has put Augmented Reality (AR) on the map like nothing else before it. But I see Pokémon Go as more mixed reality than AR.

Mixed reality is not just a half-way house between real world and VR. It is more than AR. It is not just an overlay. It is immersive. Pokémon Go is not the first mass player game driven by mobile, but it has arrived in a different age; one where people have accepted the blurring of physical and digital together.

The success of the game is a great example of blending the digital and physical worlds. Of creating a mixed reality experience that requires both physical and digital experiences to work. It is also sensorial in that it requires people to move around. If early reports are to be believed, players are highly emotionally engaged in the game meaning that Pokémon Go may be the first example of a Connected Marketing game blending the four human dimensions together.

For a quick overview of the technology involved check out this post by app developer stable|kernel 

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