'Pokémon Go' will let you play with your friends’ monster pals in AR

Niantic also announced the ability for players to add new game locations.

Niantic has been around for nine years now (it was originally part of Google before it spun out on its own), and the company is still going strong. A lot of that has to do with the success of Pokémon Go, as well as the recent debut of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. Today, the company is making several announcements — a couple of improvements to Pokémon Go and new programs for small businesses and developers — that it hopes will fulfill its ever-growing AR ambitions.

One of the more interesting revelations is that Niantic is going to add a multiplayer interaction element to Pokémon Go called "Buddy Adventure." The game already has multiplayer mode in the form of online and real-time battles, but this is a much friendlier concept, with shared AR experiences at its core.

In "Buddy Adventure," you can not only interact with your "Buddy" (a Pokémon of your choice from your collection) by feeding it berries and giving it virtual pats on the head, but you'd also be able to see your friends' Pokémon at the same time. You can then interact with them, and your friends will be able to interact with your Pokémon too. Plus, photo mode works here, so if you want to take a group shot with your friends along with all their various Pokémon Buddies, you can.

Niantic isn't sharing any gameplay specifics just yet — it's not entirely sure if feeding your Buddy berries or giving it pats will accrue any points, for example — but the idea here is that "Buddy Adventure" was designed to be real-time. Basically, you and your friends would need to have the feature enabled and be in the same location for it to work. Niantic didn't say exactly how many friends or "Buddies" the feature will accommodate, but it did emphasize that this experience is really meant for small groups of people, rather than large gatherings.