In 2016, the mobile games world was hit by a new mass phenomenon called Pokémon Go. Augmented Reality game showed the world’s readiness for technology and its capabilities in the best possible light and set new vectors for the development of the mobile gaming industry in the near future.

Current forecasts show that the global market of AR apps will exceed $ 50 billion by the beginning of the 2020. Games and applications based on this technology will dominate in online stores.

We would like to show you general concepts of mobile augmented reality industry and try to outline the prospects for the market in the coming years.

History and technical base

The term “Augmented Reality” was coined and first formulated in 1990 by the Boeing researcher Tim Caudell. The technology itself, in some or other embryonic interpretations, was implemented in 1968. For decades, the concept of embedding computer-generated images and video into the user environment didn’t have a particular developmental vector. However, the high potential of further developments was kept in the attention. Not so long ago, the technology began to trickle into the mobile devices environment.

How can augmented reality work on mobile devices? Taking into account tech stack, mobile applications often use markers or sensors to place graphics on top of images or working camera. Examples of a such technologies are QR codes and GPS / gyroscopes / accelerometers, respectively. More complex developments use neural networks in their work that allow users to edit images and interact with AR objects in the real time.

AR began to gain popularity soon. The first modern products had a number of serious vulnerabilities (unsafe gateways and third-party APIs, disabling security filters, etc.).

The starting point was that 2016: Pokémon Go and some claimed non-game applications were released. For example, AR features of Snapchat. Returning to the phenomenon of Pokémon Go, it was the game indicators that launched the second wave of developers interest in the mobile augmented reality. The game collected 50 million downloads during the first 19 days, generating $10 million in profit every day during that period. It also became an additional source of advertising and attendance for a number of public places in which players came in search of Pokémons.

Such model, totally new, with a great potential of entry points for product monetization, could not remain ignored by world’s developers.

Nearest development prospects

In the following 2 years, there were obvious events. The developers sought to replicate the success of Pokémon Go and often copied the elements of this game or its concept as a whole. This is a losing road because in the local perspective the copy project has the potential for rapid monetization, but this is a wrong move in the long term.

The success of the mobile augmented reality depends on the readiness for development, experiments, innovations and integration with the current technologies of the present. It is this position that we adhere during Worldopoly’s development. Our AR implementation into the mobile game process inherits the best achievements of the most popular gaming mechanics.

At the same time, we set global goals for improving the technical component and connect AR with other technologies (i.e. Blockchain) to the game process. Technologies and ideas of our game are closely related to each other having an equal impact on the quality of gameplay and the product’s monetization prospects. If we talk about the connection between the augmented reality and the Blockchain, AR-based coin collection becomes not just an in-game task, but gives the opportunity to receive real money in the form of WPT tokens based on the Ethereum platform. And this is not all that is implemented.

In our opinion, only the path of constant internal and external development will bring AR technologies in the mobile environment new indicators of value, both for developers and players .