WeChat is Creating its Own AR Platform
Just when you thought that virtual reality had pushed our reality to its limit, it’s time to get ready for the coming AR revolution.
Augmented reality, the kind of blending of the real world with the virtual that was most widely seen last year with the Pokemon Go app, is just about ready to hit the big time. If Apple’s recent announcement that AR capabilities would be included in its next iOS update wasn’t enough for you to be swayed over to augmented reality, the news that WeChat, China’s largest messaging app, would be creating its own AR platform should the kicker. Augmented reality is about to flood the digital world.
With nearly a billion users, WeChat, owned by Tencent, the largest gaming company in the world, is an app that offers not only messaging but a host of other services, from payment, entertainment and even transportation. In some cities the app even allows users to book doctor’s appointments or pay their bills and even traffic fines.
But as great as China may seem from a tech perspective, the government regularly not only blocks Western apps like Facebook and Twitter, it places heavy restrictions on Apple’s App Store. So while this has carried an impact on Western virtual reality experiences trying to crack the Chinese market, its impact on AR will likely be similar, so even though both Apple and Google are in development on their own AR applications, it shouldn’t be a surprise that WeChat, not facing the kinds of intense competition that you’d see in the West, would not only aim to be the largest messaging player in China, but also the nation’s leader in the oncoming AR app boom.
Considering these limitations on foreign players, it should also come as no surprise that Tencent has also been building its own digital marketplace, filled with apps built on top of WeChat, meaning that the app will hold considerable influence within a country filled with early adopters and that its upcoming AR platform could have even more opportunities to astound.
But while we have a good idea of the kinds of services and tools that WeChat can deliver to its user base, what’s not year clear is just how exactly they intend to use AR within it. Although there have been a few tech demos released that display the platform’s capabilities on a casual smartphone, before we can get a chance to interact with what they’re showing, it’s kind of hard to understand just how it may impact our lives.
Of course, I said the same thing about Pokemon Go, but as I spent a summer staring at hopelessly addicted teens wandering in search of Pokemon, realized I was wrong.
Either way, we in the West are going to be watching what WeChat come up with. Who knows? They may just create the next smartphone gaming revolution.