Niantic built its reputation on location-based games like Pokémon Go, Ingress and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, but its roots are in its Field Trip app for finding nearby activities. And believe it or not, the company has kept the app going since 2012 — even after the split with Google. Now, though, it’s ready to wind down its original project. The team is shutting down Field Trip’s services sometime later in 2019 in order to “prioritize” its efforts on augmented reality experiences.
The apps have already left their respective stores.
Don’t despair if you’re still using Field Trip and don’t want to use the alternatives. While Niantic hasn’t committed to anything at this stage, it hinted that there could be a “reimagined version” of the app at some point in the future. This isn’t so much the end to Niantic’s non-gaming days as an acknowledgment that the expectations for the company’s apps have changed.