Pokémon Go developer Niantic has acquired developer experience firm Hoss for an undisclosed amount.
The acquisition of Hoss will aid Niantic in accelerating and expanding its Lightship Augmented Reality Development Kit.
Hoss will assist the Niantic developer experience team ahead of the launch of the Lightship ARDK and will continue iterating on the overall developer experience going forward.
The acquisition of Hoss is the Pokémon Go creator’s third major acquisition this year following its purchase of community platform Mayhem in January and 3D scanning app Scaniverse in August.
Tackling the status quo
“As we are preparing to open the Lightship platform to developers around the world, it’s critically important that we get two things right — both the tools in the ARDK to help developers build new experiences and the developer experience as we work together to build this exciting new world of AR experiences,” said Niantic chief product officer Kei Kawai.
Hoss co-founder and CEO Matt Hawkins added: “We repeatedly found that developers are not happy with the status quo when it comes to developer experiences, and the chance to build out the Lightship developer experience as we’re getting ready to open the platform to developers around the world is a once-in-a-career type of opportunity that we are so incredibly excited to be a part of.”
Last month, Niantic revealed that it was shutting down the development of Catan World Explorers due to having strayed too far from the original game which made things too complicated.