AR Game Deploys 'Snap-to-Location' Tech
The new Tokidoki Sushi Cars game is using "Snap-to-Location" augmented reality for its latest digital collectible drop. The technology allows for precise placement of AR items in the real world, creating a more accurate and engaging location-based gaming experience.
The "Snap-to-Location" technology is a proprietary feature of the VeVe digital collectibles platform, which has facilitated drops for major brands like Marvel, Disney, and DC Comics. This feature allows for the precise placement and alignment of augmented reality items, enabling collectors to create and share curated digital showrooms. The Tokidoki Sushi Cars are among the first to utilize this for a more interactive and organized AR display. This level of AR precision is becoming a key area of competition. Snap Inc. offers a similar capability to developers with "Custom Landmarkers," allowing creators to anchor AR experiences to specific real-world locations. Meanwhile, Niantic's Lightship platform, the technology behind Pokémon GO, provides a robust Augmented Reality Developer Kit (ARDK) for creating immersive, location-based AR experiences. In the sports world, teams are leveraging similar location-based AR to deepen fan engagement in venues. The Minnesota Twins and Los Angeles Rams, for example, use ARound's platform to create shared stadium-wide experiences, allowing fans to participate in real-time games and see animations overlaid on the field. This move is aimed at enhancing the in-stadium experience to compete with at-home viewing. The investment landscape for location intelligence remains robust, with over $2.1 billion invested in startups and established firms in this sector during 2023-24. While overall gaming startup funding saw a dip in the first half of 2025, with around $627 million raised globally, significant investments are still being made in mobile gaming studios and monetization platforms. The health and fitness app market is also a high-growth area, with global downloads reaching 3.6 billion in 2024. Apps that encourage outdoor activity and movement, such as Strava and AllTrails, have shown particularly strong revenue growth, indicating a prime market for location-based features. The industry is projected to surpass $4 billion in global in-app purchase revenue in 2025.
