The augmented reality game Ingress, from Google’s location based step-based company Niantic Labs is finally going to be getting Android Wear support.
Niantic Labs, has released Android Wear support for their location based tour guide app ‘Field Trip’. Field Trip already has links to Ingress, with the ability to notify users when a portal is in range. The move to bring Android Wear support to Ingress is a logical one, given Google’s other properties mostly support their new platform.
Ingress which launched back in 2012 through an invite system, has grown massively, to between 5-10 million players on Android alone, since Google dropped the invite requirement last year. It’s also seen large growth on iOS which the game has also been launched on. For those who don’t know Ingress sees two teams: Enlightened and Resistance, battle to control portals which exist within the augmented reality-scape of the game. The game requires players to interact with ‘portals’ in the virtual world by going to real-world locations.
Google hasn’t announced the availability information for the update which will enable wrist notifications for Android Wear, but has provided Engadget, with a look at the screens which will appear on your wrist. As you can see, there’s notifications for both friendly and enemy portals when you come within range, and you should be able to interact with them from your wrist.
For Ingress players out there, this is quite exciting and with possibly more than 10 million passionate Ingress users out there, this development could spur further sales of Android Wear devices, which have only sold a relatively disappointing 720,000 units so far.
We’re looking forward to this release and we’ll let you know as soon as further developments arise.
