Niantic, the video game studio behind the wildly popular mobile game Pokémon Go, is getting a second chance at a viral hit by tackling the well-liked wizarding world created by JK Rowling. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite was due to release on Friday this week but the game has gone live in the US and UK on Android and iOS a day early.
In the Wizards Unite lore, the wizarding world is clashing with the Muggle, non-magic world and players take on the role of a new recruit to the Statute of Secrecy Task Force. This team must seek out Foundables which are magical artifacts, creatures, people, and memories that would alert the Muggle world to the existence of the wizarding world. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, like Pokémon Go before it, utilizes augmented reality to allow players to interact with these Foundables in the environment around you, and also utilizes Niantic’s global map to overlay in-game events with real-world landmarks and locations.
The company Niantic started out as a start-up at Google but became independent in 2015. Not even a year later, the software development company came out with Pokémon Go, a mobile augmented reality game that allowed players to assume the role as a trainer, and use the real world as the backdrop to catching their favorite Pokémon. The game’s concept was brilliant and received lots of attention, but the game’s release was anything but smooth.
Released on July 6, 2016, Pokémon Go launched with a plethora of technical issues. Server outages, crashes, glitches, and security issues plagued the game, making it nearly impossible for players to enjoy in the way it was intended to. Nevertheless, the game got better and its popularity took off, becoming one of the top grossing free mobile games of 2016.
With the experience gained and lessons learned from Pokémon Go‘s launch, Niantic is in position to deliver another hit mobile gaming experience attached to a franchise that birthed a theme park, film franchise with a new spinoff series, and more. It’s going to tough to get players out into the streets in massive waves like with Pokémon Go but achieving even a fraction of that game’s success will be a positive achievement for Niantic.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.