Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

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About

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is an augmented-reality mobile video game in which players use their smartphone camera to project videos of creatures from the Harry Potter Wizarding World franchise to create the effect that the creatures are inhabiting the real world. The game is similar to Pokémon GO and Minecraft Earth.

Online History

On November 8th, 2017, Niantic announced a follow-up to the video game Pokémon Go, which they released the previous years. They wrote in a blog post:^[1]

We're incredibly excited to announce this next step in the evolution of AR mobile entertainment. With Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, players that have been dreaming of becoming real life Wizards will finally get the chance to experience J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World. Players will learn spells, explore their real world neighborhoods and cities to discover & fight legendary beasts and team up with others to take down powerful enemies.

About one year later, on November 14th, 2018, the video game Niantic released a teaser trailer for the game on YouTube. The teaser received more than 800,000 views in less than one year (shown below).

Additionally, that day, Polygon^[2] reported some more plot details regarding the game, stating that the plot would revolve around helping the magical world government, the Ministry of Magic, collect escaped mystical creatures.

In 2019, Niantic began releasing pre-registration and beta releases of the game. On June 20th, they had begun releasing the game in its finished form, rolling out in the United States and the United Kingdom first.^[3] That day, YouTubers began uploading gameplay videos of Wizards Unite (shown below, left and right). Two days later, the game rolled out in more countries, according to Niantic.^[4]

Reception

The game received mostly positive reviews from critics and players. On the Google Play ^[5] store, the video game received a four-star rating (based on more than 128,000 reviews). On Apple's ^[6] app store, the game received a 4.5 star review (based on more than 73,000 reviews).

In a mixed review, Wired^[7] magazine praised the game for differentiating itself from Niantic's previous offering, Pokémon Go, even if it was "bloated and overly complex." They wrote:

The biggest takeaway of Wizards Unite may be the reminder that augmented reality games, even when built on the same template, can create entirely different experiences. Niantic hasn’t let Pokémon Go’s success pigeonhole its Potter fantasia. The result is bloated and overly complex, especially for a subway station time-killer. But it’s also fun, and different, and a world apart. It makes you excited to see what’s next, both within the game and beyond it.

However, the Wall Street Journal^[8] noted that compared to Pokémon Go, the game had attracted significantly fewer downloads. They wrote that the game had been downloaded 4.7 million times compared to Pokémon Go's 32 million.

On June 21st, Redditor ^[9] EliteGamer1337 posted "Harry Potter's New Game Wizards Unite Is Like Pokemon Go But Without Growing Pains" in the /r/games subreddit. The post received more than 600 points (77% upvoted) and 180 comments in less than one week.