Contact Lenses for Pokémon in Real Life?
Niantic founder and CEO, John Hanke, wants to incorporate virtual reality contact lenses to the Pokémon Go universe.
VentureBeat’s recently held their GameBeat conference in California with “over 500 top execs, investors, analysts, and entrepreneurs from the hottest companies to explore the gaming industry’s latest trends, growth opportunities, technical directions, and newest monetization opportunities.”
One of the most anticipated speakers at this event was John Hanke, founder and CEO of Niantic, the company that created Pokémon Go. He spoke about a number of topics interesting to the community, even giving some credit to the game’s critics in saying that he doesn’t want players to be constantly staring at their phones.
The solution? “I want the contact lenses that turn the world into whatever I want it to be,” Hanke said. “That’s probably going to get created in our lifetime, and I’m looking forward to it. When we started Niantic, Android Watch and Google Glass were underway at Google. I see a progression of wearables that get more sleek and sexy over time. It’s not binary where you don’t have AR one day and then do have it the next.”
While we wait for that invention, players can look forward to Pokémon Go Plus. With this, they can incorporate Pokémon Go into the real world without having to stare at their smartphones.
This device will allow users to connect it to their phones via BlueTooth, then vibrates every time they encounter something relevant in the game, such as a Pokémon or PokéStop. Then, they are able to press a button on the device to interact; players know if a Pokémon is caught or not based on the LED lights and vibrations. A release date for this Pokémon Go Plus is not yet set.
With contact lenses that put Pokémon in our real world, who knows what else the future could hold. For now, though, we can focus on finding the ever-elusive legendaries, mew, mewtwo, and ditto!
Video by VentureBeat.
