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This summer may very well be either a boom or bust for augmented reality (AR) games and brick-and-mortar businesses.
Four major AR games are coming that might create more location-based marketing opportunities the way in which Pokémon GO did in 2016: Ghostbusters World; Harry Potter: Wizards Unite; Jurassic World Alive and The Walking Dead: Our World.
All those games are getting major marketing support, including visibility from Google, whose ARCore toolkit was used to develop three out of 4 of the games. But is the market getting flooded with too many games directly?
The lesson of Pokémon GO
All 4 games promise to supply the identical type of AR-based experience that Pokémon GO provided when the sport exploded in popularity in the summertime of 2016. As brick-and-mortar businesses quickly discovered, Pokémon GO, developed by Niantic, presented them with numerous interesting opportunities.
The game offered (and still offers) a fun, engaging way for players to make use of their mobile phones and the Pokémon GO app to win points by finding Pokémon that appeared via augmented reality in designated real-world locations. The skyrocketing popularity of the sport created a surge in foot traffic for businesses similar to restaurants and occasional shops, where players would gather to capture Pokémon.
As I wrote about when it was released, smart businesses capitalized on the chance, launching promotions to draw more players into their stores. Big brands got into the act, too, with McDonald’s signing a co-marketing agreement with Niantic to lure visitors to its restaurants in Japan.
Four games in a single 12 months
Two years later, we could see the return of Pokémon GO multiplied by 4. Each of the 4 games would require players to make use of AR apps to perform feats in physical locations, as described here:
| Name of Game | Brought to You By | The Sales Pitch | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ghostbusters World | Sony Pictures Sony Pictures Entertainment Consumer Products, Ghost Corps, and FourThirtyThree Inc.(4:33) | “Ghostbusters World gameplay will enable players to battle and capture tons of of ghosts from all dimensions of the franchise, including the movies, TV shows, comic books, theme parks, and video games.” | The timing of the discharge is interesting provided that the Ghostbusters remake was released in 2016. |
| Harry Potter: Wizards Unite | Niantic and WB Games | “Explore real-world neighbourhoods and cities to find mysterious artifacts, learn to solid spells, and encounter legendary beasts and iconic characters along the way in which.” | The most highly anticipated AR game of the 12 months. |
| Jurassic World: Alive | Universal and Ludia | “In Jurassic World Alive, players can collect a wide range of dinosaurs while exploring their very own neighborhoods and cities world wide.” | Released along side the movie Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which hits screens June 22, 2018. |
| The Walking Dead: Our World | AMC and Next Games | “Fight walkers in real-world AR environments based in your location.” | The official mobile game of the favored Walking Dead TV show. |
Opportunity and unanswered questions
Pokémon GO players are encouraged, through the gameplay, to maneuver around and interact with the physical world.
Brick-and-mortar businesses have loads of reasons to have a look at these games as opportunities to create location-based marketing experiences. For example:
- Like Pokémon GO, the entire games would require participants to get outside and explore locations, which can inevitably entail people wandering to or past business establishments, generating potential foot traffic.
- Unlike Pokémon GO, these games should not emerging from out of nowhere. All of them are being supported with aggressive marketing — for the games themselves and for the well-known movies, books and TV shows related to them.
- Since Pokémon GO was released in 2016, the number of individuals within the US who use AR has increased, from 30.7 million people in 2016 to 48.1 million in 2018, based on eMarketer.
But there are also many unanswered questions. Here are two big ones:
- Are the games any good? So far, we don’t know if the games are literally going to have interaction anyone. Niantic hit a house run with Pokémon GO, and a Harry Potter-branded game is a masterstroke of an idea. But past success is not any guarantee of future success. The providers of all 4 games are asking people to take the standard of the games at face value. And thus far, quality of AR-based experiences has been hit-or-miss based on reviews of apps on the Apple app store.
- Is AR sufficiently big to support 4 games? All 4 game makers need a critical mass of users to succeed. The 48.1 million Americans who use AR at the least once a month account for roughly 15 percent of the US population. Essentially, all 4 games offer AR enthusiasts variations of the identical Pokémon GO experience: scavenger hunts and opportunities to unlock points by achieving various feats using your cell phone and AR app. Will the market support 4 very similar experiences?
If you use a brick-and-mortar business, I suggest that you simply:
- Prepare yourself. Anticipate which game aligns best with your online business and think through a method for capitalizing on the expected popularity of the sport. A bookseller will probably want to promote its stock of Harry Potter inventory and encourage game players to fulfill up at its store and rejoice Wizards Unite. A natural history museum might wish to plan on capitalizing on the success of Jurassic World Alive.
- Watch for the launch dates and monitor how the games unfold. Use your personal eyes, third-party reports and activity on apps similar to Foursquare/Swarm to watch any uptick in foot traffic which will occur at or near your store.
The summer may very well be a boom or bust. For now, the open questions on each game — including their release dates (still unknown) mean that location-based businesses will must be able to anticipate and respond in nimble fashion this summer.
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