Google and Taito’s AR Space Invaders game is out now on Android and launching soon on iOS

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By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

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Google and Taito’s new augmented reality game that lets you wave around your phone to destroy AR Space Invaders aliens is out now on Android and launching at midnight local time on July 18th on iOS, according to a blog post from Google. The two companies announced the game, Space Invaders: World Defense, at Google I/O in May.

The release is coming at a time when many other AR games aren’t doing so well. While Niantic’s Pokémon Go has been a huge success, the studio has shut down games from big brands like Harry Potter, Transformers, and the NBA and laid off employees. And it hasn’t just been Niantic that’s struggled; Microsoft shut down a Minecraft AR game in 2021 and CD Projekt Red just shut down its The Witcher AR game.

I’m not sure if World Defense is going to skyrocket into a Pokémon Go-sized hit, but the core concept of blasting a virtual alien by pointing your phone at the world around you seems like it could be fun. The game seems like it could be a good showcase of Google’s ARCore technology, which helps power the game. And you can take a silly AR selfie in a Space Invaders-themed outfit, so there’s that.

But we’ll have to wait and see if there’s enough to Space Invaders: World Defense to keep people interested after the novelty wears off. If you want to check the game out, you can get it on Google Play now and pretty soon on the App Store.

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