What Pokémon Go can teach us about the AR and VR landscape

Seriously though, what year is it? We’re certainly not listening to the new Blink 182 album, but Pokémon Go? It’s everywhere. There’s been a global tidal wave of Pokémon Go downloads, and we’re searching for Pokémon in our backyards, in museums, and on the streets in hordes. After all, we’ve gotta catch’em all, right? The US Holocaust Museum in DC even had to ask players not to play the game on memorial grounds out of respect.

The real success we need to talk about though, is how Pokémon Go represents one of the most important milestones of our tech world today. Because it’s a proof of concept. It is validation that augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) for that matter, can have successful, commercial, consumer-facing applications. (For readers unfamiliar with the differences between virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality, check out this short video on Wired.)

It might be a bit early to call Pokémon Go a unanimous success (see here), but up until recently, popular consensus on AR and VR was that they are gimmicks. A look back into the history of AR and VR brings up some disappointing results:

• Sega VR and Console: Sega announced a VR headset for its popular Sega Genesis console at CES back in 1993. However, technical difficulties kept the product in prototype limbo and was a huge flop for Sega.
• Nintendo Virtual Boy: Marketed as the first portable video game capable of 3D graphics; discontinued after one year in 1996.
• Google Glass: After a year of declining consumer sales, Google announced in 2015 that it remained committed to the prototype and its technologies but would stop production, opting instead to work further on the product in-house.

The 1993 Sega VR prototype that never made it to the shelves

What’s different this time?

Pokémon Go has hit upon a seemingly perfect combination of factors for widespread adoption and mass appeal. Historically, AR and VR technologies have suffered from the lack of compelling commercial applications of the technologies other than it ‘being cool’, and an interesting new experience. Today, the debate seems to have swung the other way, with some VR/AR advocates even calling 2016 “The Year of VR.”

Here are a few reasons for Pokemon Go’s success:

1. It brings to life the Pokémon Universe, a cultural touchstone that spans decades. The game itself lends perfectly to an AR experience, as we become ‘trainers’ in real life, catching and collecting Pokémon.
2. It appeals to generations young and old. For youth (post-millennial), it’s the newest version of Gameboy Pokémon in your smartphone. For the older (millennial and above), it’s nostalgia poking its head around, bringing us back to our childhood.
3. In true AR fashion, it utilises technology to bridge our physical world with an alternate universe, ‘augmenting’ and making our current world more fascinating to explore.

So what’s next?

It’s possible that Pokémon Go can still fail. We’re still at the onset of a technological revolution and there are plenty of critics, safety concerns and nay-sayers. But if we are to take anything out of this Pokémon Go story, it would be that to achieve commercial success and rapid adoption, one of the easiest ways to start is by improving and augmenting an existing use case. For Pokémon Go, it’s how we are delighted and entertained by ‘finding’ and ‘capturing’ Pokémon in real environments. What if we could perceive and experience other delightful moments in an AR environment? For Visionaries 777, it’s how we build and design our dream cars before ordering them.

Visionaries 777 is a Hong Kong based startup that designs and develops 3D real-time interactive configurators & visualizations. One of their products allows users to build and view their dream car using AR, VR and touch screens. Users can customize the car’s details, from the exterior paint to interior leather and rims. Working with Infiniti, the potential to create a virtual Infiniti showroom is only a few steps away.

Visionaries 777’s AR car configurator running on the iPad

Similarly, Drop.ai focuses on augmenting your driving experience by combining useful information from your smartphone with your car’s surroundings to create a single augmented display. This helps drivers keep their eyes away from their smartphones without sacrificing information, making drivers smarter and more connected. Moreover, as autonomous cars begin to populate our roads, augmented displays can be used to further enhance the driving experience (Pokémon Snap Go anyone?).

Many future technologies already exist and are just waiting for the right moment to take us by storm. Peer, a startup who participated in last year’s Infiniti Accelerator Programme 1.0, developed an affordable camera to record and livestream 3D video. They foresee that as VR headsets gain traction, there will be an increase in demand for user-generated content, which their product will enable consumers to create affordably.

Meet Peer — a stereoscopic 3D camera for film and livestream

Whilst the exact long-term vision of AR and VR is still in contention, Pokémon Go and these startups are proof that the technology is here to stay, and our world is already making a shift. We can only wait with bated breath to see what comes next, and its impact on our consumer habits. Until then however, the question we ask ourselves should change from “Will mass AR and VR become a reality? to “When will mass AR and VR become a reality?”

Visionaries 777 and Drop.ai are both startups in the current Infiniti Accelerator 2.0 cohort. Learn more about the Infiniti Accelerator here.