Niantic, makers of Pokémon Go, teased what appears to be the company's first AR glasses in a close-up shot shared on Twitter

The company has been openly discussing the idea of building its own augmented reality technology since 2017, and now CEO John Hanke has shared evidence that the project is underway And while it is difficult to judge the overall design from a single zoomed-in photo, we can already see that Niantic's AR headset includes a lens and a small speaker on the side of the frame

Hanke did not go into exact details when tweeting the teaser image Instead, he simply stated: "It is exciting to see the progress we are making to bring to life a new kind of device that leverages our platform

It remains to be seen how far the company will go with AR glasses, or whether the technology will be similar to Google Glass or Microsoft's HoloLens What is curious is that Hanke used the word "device" instead of "devices," which suggests that the Niantic CEO may have a couple more announcements in the works

The tweet immediately caught the attention of Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan, who suggested that the two companies could work together, noting that Razer had also just begun shipping the Anzu smart glasses Hanke has yet to publicly respond to the proposal, but it would certainly be exciting to see Niantic collaborate with one of the biggest names in gaming hardware

Niantic's interest in AR and mixed reality hardware is nothing new; in 2019, the company announced that it is working with Qualcomm on "integrated designs across reference hardware, software, and cloud components for AR glasses" Somewhat confusingly, however, Niantic COO Megan Quinn later clarified in an interview with Protocol that the company "has no plans" to produce its own hardware

Later in 2020, Niantic acquired a 3D mapping startup to work on advanced "planetary-scale" AR Since then, Hanke has been invited to Microsoft's Ignite 2021 conference to demonstrate what Pokémon Go might look like using Microsoft's HoloLens AR technology

The news about the potential of Niantic's AR glasses comes just a week after the company announced an exciting partnership with Nintendo to work on a new Pikmin AR game that will be coming to mobile devices this year