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Niantic and Warner Bros. unite for new Harry Potter AR game

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Harry Potter Wizards Unite Niantic Warner Bros. Wizarding

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite brings the magic of J.K.Rowling’s Wizarding World to everyday life.

Niantic, Inc. and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment are set to bring a mobile game inspired by J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World to fans worldwide.

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is an augmented reality mobile game, allowing players to be part of the rich exciting world of Harry Potter.  It will be published by Niantic and co-developed by Niantic and Warner Bros., under the latter’s Portkey Games label.

The game reveals that magic is all around us, even in our everyday world.  And now every muggle amongst us can become a witch or wizard.  Players explore neighbourhoods and cities right across the globe.  They learn to cast spells and then go on adventures to discover curious magical artefacts. Along the way they will meet legendary creatures and iconic characters from the Harry Potter world.

The partnership brings together Niantic’s AR + real-world mobile game platform alongside the franchise expertise of WB Games San Francisco’s development and publishing team.

“At Niantic, our goal is to leverage technology to create real world experiences that help people to discover the wonderful, and often magical parts of the world around them,” says John Hanke, founder and CEO of Niantic, Inc. “The beloved Harry Potter stories have captured imaginations worldwide for more than 20 years and soon we’ll turn the fantasy into augmented reality, allowing fans and their friends to become wizards and witches.”

Portkey Games is a new games label from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.  It is totally dedicated to creating video game and mobile experiences that have been inspired by J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World.

“With this game, we are allowing the passionate, worldwide fan base to experience J.K. Rowling’s deeply powerful and imaginative universe in a new, truly immersive way,” says David Haddad, President of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. “It is wonderful to have Niantic’s remarkable augmented reality expertise as we develop this incredibly rich wizarding world for players to explore in their everyday lives.”

The Harry Potter game is Niantic’s third game.  Its previous immersive real-life mobile games are Pokémon GO and Ingress. The company was born within Google but took on its own identity in 2015 with investment from Google, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company.

More details for Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will be announced in 2018.

Harry Potter continues to be a record-breaking phenomenon around the world. Each of J.K. Rowling’s books has broken sales records.  To date the series has sold over 450 million copies worldwide and been translated into 80 languages. The Harry Potter movie series, produced by Warner Bros. Pictures, is the largest-grossing film franchise in history with box office gross of more than $7.7 billion.

Image courtesy of Portkey Games.

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