Sony announced a new AR experience based on the Ghostbusters franchise. It will be available at the Sony building at Ginza Park in Japan from this month.
The experience is launched to coincide with the 35th anniversary of the original Ghostbusters move, where 4 friends can work together to fight off ghosts using a new AR R&D prototype device developed by Sony.
Although it is clearly a new AR device, the headset itself looks to be a basic reflector design, similar to the Lenovo Mirage AR that can be found in sets like the Star Wars: Jedi Challenges AR one that David reviewed a few years ago. These devices tend to have low brightness, transparency and contrast, but afford a relatively large field of view and are inexpensive to produce. Nonetheless, this is the first time we’ve heard of Sony using a device like this for a location-based AR experience.
The Ghostbusters AR experience will run from this Saturday October 12 until December 8. Each session takes approximately 60 minutes and is completely free, but will only be run 2-4 times a day. With demand expected to be high, Sony are allowing people to apply for tickets across 5 different periods, with a lottery system determining who gets tickets. You can apply to enter the ticket lottery here, but if you don’t speak Japanese you might have to use Google translate.
They encourage you to apply with 2 or more people, and you have to be over 18 and willing to complete a questionnaire alongside the experience. The small amount of sessions, limited places and associated questionnaire are probably a good indication that this is very much still a prototype and a test run for similar AR experiences to come.
Do we have any readers in Japan that are both Ghostbusters and AR fans? If so, will you be entering the lottery with the hope of getting tickets? Let us know in the comments.
