Nintendo and Niantic team up for Pikmin AR

The developers behind the popular pocket version of Pokemon are back at it again with another Nintendo collaboration. Niantic is teaming up with Nintendo to launch an AR game based on the Pikmin franchise, slated to come to mobile phones in late 2021.

Recommended Videos

A post on the official Niantic blog outlines some details about their current project. The app includes “gameplay activities to encourage walking and make walking more delightful. […] this will be the first title created by our Tokyo Studio since it was established in April 2018.”

In a press release, Nintendo says, “Niantic’s AR technology has made it possible for us to experience the world as if Pikmin are secretly living all around us. Based on the theme of making walking fun, our mission is to provide people a new experience that’s different from traditional games. We hope that Pikmin and this app will become a partner in your life.”

Pikmin is a real-time strategy puzzle game, first released in 2001 on Nintendo Gamecube. Players control many plant-like creatures known as Pikmin and lead them to collect items, fight enemies, and overcome obstacles on the Earth-like planet PNF-404.

Niantic is most well-known for its massively successful mobile AR game Pokemon GO, which was released in 2016, and is one of the top-grossing games on Android and iOS to date.

Author
Image of Cole Andrews
Cole Andrews
Cole is a lifelong PC gamer who loves FPS, RPG, and MMO games. The first PC game that got him hooked was the Counter-Strike beta in 1999. He has thousands of hours in all of the old-school Blizzard games like Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo.