Everybody knows Snapchat even if they don’t use it. The social media giant is built upon one simple premise – disappearing photographs and messages. You send a photo and it’s gone 10 seconds later. Simple, right? Well on Android, Snapchat has a long, much-disliked history. So much so that the company pledged late last year to rewrite its Android application with a focus on performance and ease of use. While we haven’t seen much of that, we have seen a brand new UI (that users begged to be rolled back). Now there’s even more news, but it’s not quite an application performance-oriented re-write. You’ll soon be able to play games within Snapchat according to a report from The Information.
According to the report, Snap Inc. has already signed deals with multiple game publishers to launch its own gaming platform later this year. It does make sense given that the company has been toying with augmented reality games for the past few months. You can use special filters called “Snappables” which can turn your surrounding environments into an AR game. As a result, it’s likely that other games on the platform will also utilize the camera to create their playing environments. It’s not clear if Snap intends to compete with Google’s ARCore or not, but it’s unlikely as the end goal of both services appears to be very different. Snapchat is focused around entertainment, while ARCore is replacing Project Tango which was for a whole lot more.
While Instagram and Snapchat have been going toe-to-toe in features as of late, both have deviated to create their own thing recently. Instagram recently launched IGTV, a YouTube-like competitor. CEO Evan Spiegel in the report from The Information expressed his admiration for Tencent’s business model and how it makes money from in-game payments. Snapchat already tried that before with replays, charging $0.99 for 3 before quietly making them free afterward. The company has had trouble monetizing its application. Through augmented reality games, they may just have found the solution.
Source: The Information Via: TechCrunch