Niantic Spatial is the geospatial AI tech company that spun off from Niantic after it sold its games business and portfolio of titles, including Pokémon GO, Monster Hunter Now, and Pikmin Bloom, to Scopley. Niantic Spatial seemed to be out of the videogames industry, until last night, during the Kojima Productions Beyond the Strand anniversary presentation, Niantic Spatial chief executive officer and Niantic founder John Hanke joined Hideo Kojima on stage to announce a partnership between the two entities to create what seems to be a Pokémon GO-like AR Death Stranding game.
The Beyond the Strand presentation featured several major announcements from Hideo Kojima and Kojima Productions, like a teaser trailer for OD, which we now know is fully titled ‘OD: Knock.’ We got an update on PHYSINT with a look at the game’s key art and heard from some of the actors included in the project. We heard a bit more from the team working on A24’s Death Stranding film, and we got to see a trailer for Death Stranding Mosquito, the animated film based on the series, also in the works.
None of those were the things that closed out the show. This partnership with Niantic Spatial closed out the over two-hour presentation, as it seemed to embody the theme of the whole show, which was to look ahead into the future of entertainment and storytelling from Kojima Productions.
Essentially, Kojima Productions will leverage Niantic Spatial’s geospatial AI tech to create an AR experience that works with your phone, and also, it seems, your smart glasses, to enable an entertainment experience wherever you go.
“The collaboration marks a significant moment for both companies and a shared vision to push the boundaries of what’s possible in interactive storytelling,” a press release for the announcement reads. “For Kojima Productions, it’s a bold expansion into new forms of media beyond traditional gaming. For Niantic Spatial, it underlines the potential of geospatial AI technology to transform how people and machines understand and interact with the physical world.”
Niantic Spatial boss John Hanke added, “At Niantic Spatial, we’re building a living model of the world that people and machines can talk to, creating a new canvas for real-world storytelling and interaction. We are delighted to be working with Kojima Productions to explore what our combined creativity and innovation can accomplish for new and existing fans.”
Overall it seems like an interesting idea for sure, and definitely not out of bounds for the kind of thing Hideo Kojima could envision and conceptualize. Whether it’ll actually work as a game or as a software product that people will use and spend money on is a different matter, since we’ve currently no idea on how this experience is meant to come together.
“To give just a wild example, it’s like the real Death Stranding in the real world,” Hideo Kojima said on stage via a translator. “And you could connect with people, or you could connect with the actual environment there in your city. Previously, it was like, virtual reality, but this time I’m thinking more about connecting with the real environment.”