Pokemon Go developer Niantic today acquired Hoss, a start-up company that will develop a platform and set of tools that makes it easier for developers to work with Niantic’s upcoming Lightship ARDK.
Lightship is Niantic’s “planet-scale” AR platform, which provides developers with an SDK to build AR experiences on a global map — a type of game popularized by Niantic’s mega-hit Pokemon Go in 2016. The Hoss acquisition will see the team working on a solid platform portal for developers using Lightship, which is currently in private beta but will soon move to a public release.
“As we are preparing to open the Lightship platform to developers around the world, it’s critically important that we get two things right — both the tools in the ARDK to help developers build new experiences, and the developer experience as we work together to build this exciting new world of AR experiences,” said Niantic’s chief product officer Kei Kawai in a prepared statement.
Hoss were part of the Y Comibinator winter class of 2020, and have since grown the business and found success in “creating compelling developer-first experiences that combine self-service and rich community engagement,” according to Niantic.
Hoss co-founder and CEO Matt Hawkins said the acquisition was a great opportunity for the start-up. “We repeatedly found that developers are not happy with the status quo when it comes to developer experiences,” he said in a prepared statement.”The chance to build out the Lightship DX as we’re getting ready to open the platform to developers around the world is a once-in-a-career type of opportunity that we are so incredibly excited to be a part of.”
You can read more about Hoss here. In other Niantic news, Dan Morris, the former Head of Developer Relations at Facebook Reality Labs, joined the company early last month. Meanwhile, we’re still waiting on more news on the upcoming Pikman AR game from Niantic, which is being produced in partnership with Nintendo, as well as the upcoming Transformers AR game, in partnership with Hasbro.
