And the 5G network now has exclusive games

If you find it crazy that different digital game stores on the PC platform have exclusive games, or that the raytracing effects of certain games are temporarily exclusive to graphics cards from one manufacturer, here’s another shock. We could soon have games that are exclusive to the 5G network.

The demonstration of this comes straight from the creators of the megahit Pokemon GO. The team from Niantic has released a technology demo called Codename: Urban Legends - a mobile game that aims to show us what is possible when augmented reality technology is combined with the speed of a 5G network.

The game is based on concepts already seen in Pokemon GO and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite games, meaning it brings a cast of spells to monsters that appear in real locations in augmented reality. The novelty is that in this AR experience, 10 times more players can participate at the same time than is possible on the 4G network, so Niantic can design its AR games as a kind of MMO title.

Other advantages of 5G include ten times lower latency in AR games, as well as lower battery consumption of mobile devices when using AR applications. In other words, they’ve taken a bite out of that 5G and as soon as the number of users with compatible devices is large enough, chances are they’ll slowly switch their existing games exclusively to 5G as well.

It’s still a long way off, but games like Pokemon GO are live service titles that eventually stop being playable on older devices. For example, as of last year, Pokemon GO is no longer playable on devices with the old Android 5 operating system, nor the iPhone 6.