Niantic's follow up to Pokémon Go could incorporate audio cues

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last 15 months, you’re probably well acquainted with Pokémon Go by now. The Augmented Reality game is one of the biggest mobile titles ever to grace the Play Store. Niantic, the company behind the game, is now dropping some hints at what its next title might look like. Instead of asking players to walk around with their phone in front of their face, Niantic may look to include audio cues instead. According to Niantic CTO Phil Keslin, the company will develop a game that players can interact with in a more natural manner.

Keslin talked a bit about how unnatural it looks when users hold their phones while playing AR games:

I can tell you from experience that people don’t do this. It makes them look like a total doofus if they’re doing it for an extended period of time

Audio cues could easily fix the problem of people feeling like a “doofus” while holding their phones for long periods of time. Players could be alerted to events via the speakers in their phones or earbuds. Receiving a phone call or an audio alert when you’re in close proximity to an event could give you clues, according to Keslin. These ideas came about when Niantic was developing Ingress, but they never made it into the game. It seems that instead of scrapping them all together, Niantic will instead incorporate them into a new game.

So far, we haven’t heard much about Niantic’s next game. It did a great job with Pokémon Go, but that already had a built-in fanbase due to the Pokémon tie-in. Ingress has developed a cult following since its release in 2013 and has over ten million installs. Can Niantic go 3/3 and develop another hit? Only time will tell.