Niantic's Harry Potter: Wizards Unite Gets a Release Window

Yer a wizard, Harry. Soon.

News by Nadia Oxford, Staff Writer

Updated on 3 January 2018

Look alive, Muggles. The world's gone foul, and Niantic's going to ask you to pick up your wands and light our darkest hour later this year.

Niantic CEO John Hanke touched on the studio's upcoming Harry Potter-themed mobile AR game, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, in a recent interview with Financial Times about Pokémon GO's impending release in China. Financial Times' interview is behind a paywall, but Comicbook.com has a summation.

It's never too early to remind you: Cool wizards don't violate traffic laws for the sake of an AR game.

Look for Wizards Unite in the second half of 2018, and try not to stress about the game possibly being bogged down by the server issues that infamously plagued Pokémon GO upon its 2016 launch. Hanke says Niantic is "much better positioned" to handle the influx of server traffic this time around. "In terms of dealing with public locations, government policy, regulations and public reaction to people being out in the real world, we have built up our expertise there," he says.

We'll see soon enough, once the weather warms up. As a natural-born Hufflepuff who keeps getting sorted into Gryffindor and Slytherin with nearly every online quiz she takes, I'm looking forward to Wizards Unite finally telling me who the hell I am.

Sometimes we include links to online retail stores. If you click on one and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. See our terms & conditions.

Nadia Oxford

Staff Writer

Nadia has been writing about games for so long, only the wind and the rain (or the digital facsimiles thereof) remember her true name. She's written for Nerve, About.com, Gamepro, IGN, 1UP, PlayStation Official Magazine, and other sites and magazines that sling words about video games. She co-hosts the Axe of the Blood God podcast, where she mostly screams about Dragon Quest.

PlayStation 5 Update Lets You Know If You're About to Play the PS4 Version of Game

Check yourself before you last-gen yourself.

Stardew Valley Just Got Beaches, Fish Tanks, Swimming Ducks, and a Whole Lot More

Nearly five years on, Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone just pushed what he says is Stardew's "biggest update yet."

Alien: Isolation Is Free on Epic and Just As Good as It Was in 2014

Get the motion tracker and don't go in the vents.

Shigeru Miyamoto Expresses Confidence in the Younger Generation of Nintendo

The legendary creator says the spirit will stay alive.