Established in 2010, mobile game developer Niantic is best known for releasing the outrageously popular Pokemon GO in 2015. In addition, the studio announced an upcoming AR game called Peridot in April, with a full release coming later this year. However, the Android and iOS developer isn’t content with one new game, bringing its preferred flavor of augmented reality to the world of professional sports.
Niantic unveiled the upcoming NBA All-World with a new blog post and teaser trailer. The officially licensed game doesn’t have a specific release date yet, but Niantic’s reportedly been developing it secretly for some time already. Interested sports fans can also pre-register on NBA All-World’s official website.
The thirty-second-long teaser doesn’t offer much insight into how the game functions, just showing a few logos and an animation of the world turning into a giant basketball. However, developers shared a few screenshots showing a game reminiscent of Pokemon GO. Senior Producer Marcus Matthews said that NBA All-World “blends the real world with 1-on-1 basketball action, collecting, fashion and more.” Players pick up upgrades and cosmetics at the game’s equivalent of Pokemon GO’s PokéStops. These locations will include real-world basketball courts and sporting goods stores. Meanwhile, players will go head-to-head against NBA stars like Stephen Curry and Jayson Tatum in NBA All-World’s equivalent of Gym Battles.
Niantic is developing the new game with assistance from HypGames, an Orlando-based studio that specializes in Android and iOS sports games. Founded by former Outlaw Sports developers, the team brings decades of development experience to the table. Matthews, meanwhile, produced the very first NBA 2K game for Sega in 1999. He hopes to leverage his and HypGames' decades of experience to create a unique game that appeals to both casual and hardcore basketball fans.
While Niantic hasn’t announced a specific release date, it reportedly hopes to launch the game alongside the 2022-2023 basketball season. The upcoming season starts October 18th, so basketball fans can likely expect NBA All-World to launch somewhere around that time. Matthews also announced that Niantic intends to soft-launch NBA All-World in select regions ahead of the full release. Fans can find out if they are qualified to be beta-testers by signing up on the game’s website.
As others have noted, Niantic’s new game is far from the typical basketball sim. The popular NBA 2K franchise usually prides itself on having a high level of realism and attention to detail. The NBA 2K Playgrounds spinoff series is more arcadey but still within the broad definition of a conventional sports game. NBA All-World may have the potential to shake up what a mainstream sports game is, though mirroring the success of Pokemon GO may be a tall order.
NBA All-World is in development for Android and iOS.
Source: Niantic
