Peridot release date announced by Niantic: the next AR tamagotchi scheduled for May 2023

After a closed beta in Denmark, Norway and part of Southeast Asia between last summer and November, Niantic's upcoming AR tamagotchi is back in the news. The American studio has just announced the release date of Peridot in a series of press releases and social media posts. By the way, you can also pre-register for Peridot on Android and iOS to enjoy a reward at launch. I tell you everything you need to know about Peridot and expect from this virtual tamagotchi.

Peridot release date and gameplay

The release date of Peridot is May 9, 2023. This date concerns the whole world and all mobile devices Android and iOS compatible with the game.

Let's talk a bit about gameplay in Peridot when it's released soon. Rather than focusing on augmented reality immersion to make it a true visual nugget, developers Niantic have spent much of their time creating a very diverse Dots generation system. For the release of Peridot, you will be able to generate your own pet Dot.

Then you'll have to crossbreed it with other Dots to get a collection of unique and colorful virtual animals. And while you're not playing mad scientist with genetic mutations, you'll have to take care of your Dots in the usual tamagotchi gameplay loop.

Dots will have a personality, sleep, eat and play on your phone screen. If they thrive because you take care of them, they will grow up and become adults so they can generate new Dots. In Peridot, there are archetypes of creatures like Unicorn or Clownfish but an infinite number of possible variations.

In addition to the release of Peridot, we are also awaiting the release of Marvel World of Heroes, the Marvel x Niantic game that is currently in the pre-registration phase.

Pre-register at Peridot

If you want to pre-register for Peridot before the release of Niantic's game, it's very simple. Go to the game's iOS and Android page on the stores and pre-register with your game account. This way, you'll receive a notification as soon as Peridot is released and you'll get an exclusive little party hat for your Dot when the game launches.

The reward isn't incredible compared to what other mobile games offer in pre-registration, but if you're obsessed with styling your augmented reality tamagotchi, you'll surely be thrilled to gain access to a unique cosmetic item.

A reality that does not live up to the trailers

The technology presented by Niantic for the release of Peridot is far below what is commercially teased. I'm not even talking about the visuals of the trailers which I find almost more misleading than the mobile game ads on TikTok. It's been going on for years and Niantic doesn't offer any real gameplay in their game trailers: even what looks like it is excessively edited. Having seen some gameplay from Peridot, I can tell you that it's best not to get too hype.

The characters constantly glitch like they're having an epileptic fit on screen, you can see through their bodies which aren't solid but rather a weird hair card simulation full of bugs that's more creepy than cute and the screen is covered in bullshit effects like bubbles and yellow lines to make you forget how much the actual visuals of the game suck. Whatever Peridot's promise, carried visually by the augmented reality, is far from being fulfilled and the augmented reality wasn't worth implementing at all to look like this.

Niantic prides itself on being a forerunner in augmented reality with its Lightship platform to help developers produce AR games. We'd love to play AR games that actually work like what's featured on the Lightship homepage.

However, if we stop judging by the studio's promises and look at the real facts, the biggest productions with Lightship are Niantic games such as Wizards Unite (which has closed) and Pikmin Bloom (a walking simulator with anecdotal and not so good augmented reality) in addition to the last game DracARys released at the same time as the House of the Dragon series which reaches less than two stars as a Playstore rating.

Honestly, this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but Niantic has been mocking the public for a long time. The company takes years to listen to players Pokémon GO on Reddit and just releases skins passable games under the guise of an existing and popular license. But they still managed to make a game die Harry Potter, so kudos to them.

Peridot goes even further in its use of augmented reality since your Dots can "dig" and fetch a ball (taking into account the surface of the ground), but it's far from a stroke of genius. You can find the different gameplay phases of Peridot presented on the official website of the game.

When you consider how many years have passed since Niantic's first steps in AR, there's a lot to be disappointed about with this title that focuses on creatures that look like NFTs and don't seem to be worth a good old Nintendogs.