Dhe makers of «Pokémon Go» are hoping for the popularity of the NBA to continue their great success. In Niantic’s new smartphone game “NBA All-World” you can meet professionals from the North American professional basketball league virtually. Like the Pokémon in certain locations that can be found on a map, they are shown in the live image of the smartphone camera on the display.
The first goal is to get the stars into your own team. To do this, you have to defeat them in a throwing competition at the basket. After that they can be trained and sent to competitions. The concept is similar to other location-based games from the developer company, whose “Pokémon Go” became a global phenomenon in 2016.
NBA is to come to the neighborhood
The idea now is “to bring the magic of the NBA to the neighborhood,” explains Niantic. For competitions, there are virtual basketball courts in the area where players can fight their way up the leaderboards. For this purpose, more than 100,000 actually existing places were built into the map.
So far, Niantic has struggled to repeat the resounding success of «Pokémon Go». A game featuring characters from the Harry Potter universe has been discontinued. The development of games based on the “Catan” board game and with “Transformers” Autobots was stopped before they could be widely introduced.
Niantic is currently cooperating with Nintendo for a game with characters from the “Pikmin” series and is trying to establish digital creatures from its own company with “Peridot”.
