Forget Pokemon, Niantic Set to Start on Harry Potter GO?
First things first, let’s make sure that we put this solidly in the category of unfounded rumor and/or possible hoax. Now, if you haven’t heard about Pokemon GO yet you might be living under a rock. Whether you like it or not, everyone and their dog seems to be playing the augmented reality mobile game and if there’s anything out there that has a chance at dethroning the almighty pocket monsters it may very well be the Harry Potter franchise. According to rumors floating around the web, Harry Potter GO could become a reality.
Shortly after the launch of Pokemon GO fans set to imagining what other franchises could work in such an interactive setting and logically Harry Potter came to mind. The thought of a Harry Potter AR game got people so excited that one hopeful gamer decided to create a petition to both Niantic and Warner Bros to make it a reality. At the time of writing, there are over 38,000 signatures on the petition.
Now according to website JTXH News (and a few other sites), a senior developer at Niantic, Marcus Figueroa had a few things to say about the possibility of Harry Potter GO with the most notable statement being that they had acquired the rights to the franchise.
We have acquired the rights for the app. The demand for this title was absolutely insane, so we figured we’d give it a shot. If we’re lucky we might see a launch by early 2017, but it’s hard to tell this early in the project.
We want to do something with schools of witchcraft and wizardry, similar to pokestops in Pokemon GO. As wells a quest system, and possibly large-scale completely interactive events, but no promises. That’s all I can say.
Now if this were to be true we’d be just as excited as the next guy but there are some undeniable hiccups in the story. The most notable absence is the direct link to the supposed interview. JTXH provides a link to a now defunct, or possibly never existing interview over at IGN.
Questions, questions, questions with no link to true answers. Do you think Harry Potter GO could become a reality? While the hunger is there from fans we have to say that at this point, this is all just a ruse, but boy would we ever like to be proven wrong.