Renowned chipmaker Qualcomm has announced that it's joining hands with Square Enix on a new project. This will see Qualcomm and Square Enix collaborate to create Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) gaming experiences for users in the future.
Despite issues around titles like Babylon's Fall and Marvel's Avengers, Square Enix has seen a successful growth trajectory in recent years thanks in large part to its library of quality games. Now, the popular game publisher looks to make headway in another space through a partnership with Qualcomm. The chipmaker itself has been investing more in the gaming arena as of late, especially with Qualcomm seemingly working on its own gaming console. The announcement comes as one of its latest efforts in expanding the company's footprint in the gaming industry.
As per the announcement, Square Enix's Advanced Technology Division will work on the Snapdragon Spaces Extended Reality (XR) Developer platform. This is where the collaboration will see to creating head-worn Augmented and Mixed Reality gaming experiences. "We have been investing in XR and look forward to building on Snapdragon Spaces. In particular, we think the time is right with XR to innovate on games of a classic genre we are especially known for and look forward to sharing them with the world to further our mission to help spread happiness across the globe," states Square Enix Technical Director Ben Taylor commenting on the partnership. Square Enix is the latest among a list of partners to join the Snapdragon Spaces platform that includes the likes of Oppo, Xiaomi, Motorola, Deutsche Telekom, and T-Mobile U.S. among others.
Qualcomm actively invests in the XR space where the company believes it to be the "future of mobile computing." The chipmaker has already acquired several companies in the industry including HINS SAS, a hand recognition and gesture recognition solutions entity, as well as AR tech company Wikitude. Both of these acquisitions now fall under the Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer platform which Qualcomm officially launched last November. So far, the platform offers support for a number of existing ecosystems such as Epic's Unreal Engine, Unity AR Foundation, and Unity MARS to name a few.
Technologies such as AR or MR are nothing new in the gaming industry with several companies already exploring the space. Thanks to the massive popularity of hardware like the Oculus Quest and the hype around metaverse, this interest has only gathered steam in the recent past. For instance, HTC Vive has showcased a concept video of what a day in the metaverse may look like while others like ProTubeVR are already investing in bringing more real-life look and feel aspects to VR games. It will be interesting to see how Square Enix will play a part in building AR and MR experiences and what it potentially holds for gamers.
Source: Qualcomm