Author: Denny

Valve begins to take mobile gaming more seriously

Mobile gaming has been picking up steam steadily for the past few years, and now large game companies are finally beginning to pay more attention to the burgeoning sector. Large development studios are beginning to see the promise that is held within the mobile gaming market and some are beginning to make a serious effort to enter into it. Valve is hard at work on a new console that called the Steam Box, but that does not mean that the company is ignoring the mobile space, as it does actually have some major plans for mobile gaming.

Littlefoot will be new mobile gaming device from Valve

Valve is currently developing a mobile gaming device that has been codenamed “Littlefoot.”The Steam Box is taking up a significant amount of Valve’s resources, but the company has plans to launch Littlefoot as soon as possible in an effort to take advantage of the massive hype surrounding mobile gaming. There is a chance that the two consoles will come out at the same time, as speculation suggests that Valve has been developing the products side-by-side. Before Steam Box had an official name, it was known as “Bigfoot.”

Littlefoot and Steam Box likely to have some sort of connection

Littlefoot may be a tablet device or something similar to a smart phone, but specific details are not yet available. It will be used for mobile gaming, however, and have some form of connectivity with the Steam Box. Littlefoot may actually be a sort of controller for the Steam Box that allows gamers to play games without actually having to physically connect to the console itself. It may also be used as a standalone product, similar to the way the Wii U and its Gamepad work.

Hype continues to grow for the Steam Box

Mobile gaming has managed to catch the attention of Valve, which is one of the most celebrated companies in the game industry currently. Among consumers, Valve rarely makes mistakes, thus the hype surrounding the Steam Box and its Littlefoot counterpart is only expected to increase in the months leading up to the release of both products.

Consumers are familiar with the small, squared QR codes on many products and in advertising, but often do not feel motivated to scan the code with their smartphone. A new company aims to not only change the look of the code, but also to make it more relevant so that consumers are more likely to scan.

Visualead and QR codes

Even if consumers do not know what QR code does, they have probably noticed it in various places like in advertising and on products. Those that have used it have been somewhat disappointed in the results and are reluctant to waste time doing it again. However, Visualead wants to change all of that by making QR more useful and even more profitable for businesses. Most consumers are not even aware of what the code can actually do.

New, improved QR code

Those who have seen QR code know the code has little to be desired in looks. The code is often in black and white and is comprised of small squares. The look is not very appealing. In most uses, these are scanned to give more details about a product or service but they rarely went any further than that. Some offered sales information and some are used for rewards programs, but consumers mostly ignore them. Visualead has devised a new, much more appealing appearance for QR code by blending it with the company logo while still keeping the components needed to make sure the code works.

The trick for Visualead has been to make sure the code and image are appealing without rendering the code useless. They have worked code into artwork and Logos for many well-known companies and even into pictures intended for use on Facebook. Visualead saw more than 300,000 scans in a very short and very limited test run.

Off and running

Investors have taken notice of the success of that limited trail run. Thanks to that success, Visualead has secured substantial backing and has begun the search for advertisers and companies that could benefit from what they have to offer. Not only could the new QR code be good for the typical uses, it could also, through the work of this company, see a consumer from introduction to a product to a final sale, all through a simple QR code scan.