Bringing video game characters to life through augmented reality and having gamers interact with them via their mobile devices is a growing business opportunity. Niantic knocked this idea out of the park with Pokémon Go and Square Enix is hoping to do the same with another popular Japanese franchise. Reported by The Verge, Square Enix announced the mobile AR game Dragon Quest Walk for iOS and Android.
The trailer for Dragon Quest Walk doesn’t feature actual gameplay but shows off a plethora of the series’ characters in Japan. The trailer ends with clips of gameplay and a sword blocked off with caution tape. Thus, the game may incorporate searches around participating areas for gear that will help you fight against the creatures you come across while walking around. There’s a party system as well but we’ll have to wait and see how it works. As far as what will be powering the map for this gaming experience, Dragon Quest Walk will be using Google Maps.
One of the unsung strengths of Pokémon Go is the use of Niantic’s database that was utilized for the developer’s other game, Ingress. Ingress is a location-based AR experience much like Dragon Quest Walk and it focused on points of interest around the world like landmarks, murals, historic buildings, businesses, and more. With Pokémon Go, those landmarks were turned into Pokéstops and Gyms and many of the businesses represented took advantage of this by offering deals to those participating in the game and hosting events. Businesses that weren’t a part of the database even reached out with hopes to be added.
The Dragon Quest franchise garnered a lot of love in its 1986 debut and has continued to grow into one of the most well-loved JRPG series in addition to being one of the longest-running. It hasn’t reached the level of popularity of the Pokémon brand, though, and Dragon Quest Walk won’t likely reach the incredible heights that Pokémon Go attained.
As it stands, we do not know if Dragon Quest Walk will be released for mobile devices outside of Japan. As reported by Gematsu, Dragon Quest 11: Echoes of an Illusive Age sold 4 million copies globally as of November and more than 3 million of those copies were sold in Japan. There’s a market outside of the game’s home base, but it’s not nearly as massive. With that understanding, it’s likely Square Enix would consider Dragon Quest Walk a success even if it only blows up in Japan.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.