Pokemon Go Developer Buys Company That Specializes in Multiplayer AR

A recent purchase by Niantic could hint at some not so distant plans for Pokemon Go and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.

Yesterday, Niantic Labs announced they had purchased Escher Reality, a small six person company that focuses on "persistent, cross platform, multi-user experiences."

Escher's major product is AR technology that allows players on multiple phones to interact with the same virtual objects at the same time. While Pokemon Go has a limited form of this capability in that players can battle in raids and at gyms at the same time, Escher's technology opens up both Pokemon Go and its upcoming Harry Potter: Wizards Unite game to exciting possibilities.

You can check out an example of Escher's work below, which shows two players playing a Pong-esque game using their smartphones: and tablets.

The biggest potential impact that Escher could have on Pokemon Go is the integration of spontaneous multiplayer battles. Right now, Pokemon Go players are limited to battling in gyms, but Escher could integrate their AR technology to allow players to battle each other anywhere.

Of course, that's pure speculation on our part, as Niantic hasn't given details on what the Escher team will be working on. A brief statement released by Niantic seemed to hint that Escher's AR technology would be available to third party developers, which would mean that Niantic would be dipping their toe into the game engine business instead of strictly developing their own games.

"The addition of the Escher AR technology is incredibly exciting to us at Niantic as it significantly accelerates our work on persistent, shared AR as part of the Niantic real-world application platform," Niantic wrote on their blog. "It's our intention to make our cross-platform AR technology available more widely to developers later this year."

This is the second major acquistion Niantic has made over the last few months. Previously, Niantic purchased Evertoon to help develop a social mechanic to their various products. That led Pokemon Go players to speculate that some sort of in-game chat would eventually be added to Pokemon Go, but that is also merely speculation.