Ingress, a mobile augmented-reality game from Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), was launched by the company into closed beta on its Android operating last November, and will be available on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s iOS operating system next year.
Google’s plans for Ingress
Brandon Badger, Ingress product manager, confirmed Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s plan to bring the mobile augmented-reality game to iOS in 2014 during an interview with AllThingsD. Badger did not provide the exact month when Ingress will be available on iOS.
Approximately one million users activated Ingress on Android smartphones and it has hundreds of thousands of active players per month. Since its release, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) updated the mobile game with new features and fixed some bugs.
Ingress game play
Ingress players join either the Enlightened or the Resistance team, and their primary objective in the game is to defend the human race from a takeover by an unknown “Shaper” force or by helping in the enlightenment of Mankind by creating an alliance with the Shapers. Players who belong to the Enlightened or Resistance teams will be able to achieve their goal by creating Control Fields over geographic areas. Players roam around the world capturing or defending portals that represent real-world point of interests such as government infrastructures or important landmarks. Each team measures their progress using their controlled mind units.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) provides clues about certain mysterious new technologies through a live story every week. Players gain points for their team by exploring and collaborating with total strangers online and offline.
Niantic Labs, the creator of Ingress, said that the game is fully playable on iOS port. Players can play on jailbroken and non-jailbroken devices, but Niantic Labs warns, “Use at your own risk, banning may result for using a third party app.”
Location-based gaming
According to Badger, Niantic Labs wants to build a platform outside developers’ location based games by using the information it learned from Ingress location-based gaming. Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is the only one with access to the special version of its local data, and it has the ability to feed players with a custom map of local landmarks, which would look like it came from “The Matrix” instead of Google Maps.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is releasing a new story for Ingress called 13Magnus today. The company is conducting live-play events for its active players in 38 cities worldwide that will last nine weeks. The live-play kicks off in San Jose and Los Angeles today, and it will end in San Francisco on December 14.
