Pokemon Go's AR was a joke, but the promise of AR was very real and compelling to people, so they were wildly successful and now have the resources to actually try and solve the technical problems for real.

A lot of startups work this way. They have an ambition to do something but really no chance of doing it. But if they can attract enough attention and raise enough money they might actually be able to attempt it for real.

Crowd funding overtly works like this, but it's really common in regular companies as well. If you can show there's a chance, maybe you can raise enough money to actually do it.