Pokemon Go Hololens Demo Shown off at Microsoft Ignite

During one of the presentations held at Microsoft's annual series of events, Ignite, Pokemon Go creator John Hanke demonstrated what an AR version of the game would look like using the Hololens 2 device. He then entered into a Pokemon battle with the product marketing manager of the game, Veronica Saron.

Pokemon Go Hololens Demo Shown off at Microsoft Ignite cover

A demo showing what a world full of Pokemon would look like was shown at one of Microsoft Ignite’s keynote speeches. More specifically, the brains behind Pokemon Go, the smartphone app that took the world by storm a few years ago, John Hanke, took to the stage to show what it would look like if the game were available on Microsoft’s new Hololens 2 mixed reality device.

It should be pointed out that this was simply a demonstration for the sake of showing off the new product, and Pokemon Go will not be available on it, nor are there plans for a Nintendo/Microsoft collaboration any time in the future, but the idea did seem quite promising.

Hanke was able to walk around, seeing all the creatures around him while wearing the Hololens 2, and at some point, he opened a menu with a flick of his hand and took out a Poke Ball that contained a Pikachu. He then went on to feed it a berry, and it was interesting to see that, as Hanke continued to walk around, his Pikachu companion was able to follow his movements and keep up with him.

All this is thanks to Microsoft’s new mixed-reality platform called “Microsoft Mesh”, which is boosted by the capabilities of the gadget. According to the creators, it will “…allow people in different physical locations to join collaborative and shared holographic experiences on many kinds of devices”. 

Hanke: “Our part of this is the work of stitching the digital and physical worlds together, connecting the bits and atoms so these experiences can be possible using the Niantic platform. But social connections are really at the heart of everything we do, and Microsoft Mesh innovations just enrich that.”

The Niantic founder and CEO added that Pokemon Go has now seen over a billion downloads ever since it launched in 2016.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

×