Sony Announces Collaboration in Audio Augmented Reality with Niantic

Sony has signed an agreement with Niantic, the gaming company that developed the massively popular online game Pokemon GO, creating a global phenomenon (and a business). The collaboration  targets the Niantic's development of augmented reality (AR) mobile games expanded with AR for headphones and earphones, such as the just announced new Sony LinkBuds. For users to be able to add audio augmented reality, they need personal audio solutions that deliver spatial audio in sync with the game on-screen, while maintaining environment awareness for safety.
 
Sony is already developing products and technologies that allow users to enjoy the sound of the virtual world from headphones while capturing the sounds of the real world. Niantic owns game titles such as "Ingress," "Pokemon GO" and "Pikmin Bloom," which utilize AR applications for mobile devices, and is expanding its services widely around the world. With this agreement, both companies will further accelerate new development efforts in the AR gaming field toward implementing a more immersive gaming experience combined with headphones - not a small challenge, given the problematic latency derived from wireless audio and the heavy, on-device processing required for immersive experiences, plus the need to ensure that users remain aware of their surroundings.

"Through this contract, we will combine the technologies of our companies and aim to implement a gaming experience through headphones that features auditory AR, rather than just visual. We plan to collaborate together on the development for application software for auditory AR, as well as for promotion activity in the auditory AR field," says Hiroshi Nakamura, Head of Mobile Product Business Division, Home Entertainment & Sound Products Business Group, Sony Corporation.

"By linking Sony's Spatial Sound technology with Niantic's game content, we aim to deliver astonishing experiences that fuse reality with games through headphones. For our first initiative, we aim to release "Ingress" within 2022, which will allow you to enjoy auditory AR with our truly wireless headphones, LinkBuds, announced by Sony today. The LinkBuds link you to the real and the virtual world for a "Never Off" wearing experience," Nakamura adds.

"Sony is a global brand with a wide range of audio products and has excellent audio technology. By combining Sony's audio technology with Niantic's AR technology, we believe that we can offer a new AR experience that could not be created with conventional visual AR alone. We look forward to providing a more immersive AR world within the real world," states Setsuto Murai, VP, Niantic.
www.sony.com | www.nianticlabs.com