Pokemon Go could set off a new wave of augmented reality games

Pokemon Go has been a huge boon for both Nintendo and the Pokemon Company, which holds the rights for the animated franchise. Lesser known is that the game is actually being produced by Niantic Labs, a San Francisco-based startup that was incorporated as a Google subsidiary in 2011 and spun out of the company last year when Google reorganized under the Alphabet moniker. Niantic is being funded by Google, Nintendo and the Pokemon company as well as Fuji TV and a few other high-profile investors. Niantic's team includes some key members of Google's former Maps team. While at Google, Niantic first built Field Trip, an app that would notify users of murals, historic buildings and other interesting places around them while walking through a city -- think of it as a kind of city guide for mobile devices that sends out alerts whenever you walk by something noteworthy.