Greater than 500 people from 21 countries and 39 states and provinces gathered at Uncasville, Conn.-based Mohegan Sun in June to wait the EMPOWER Bally Systems User Conference 2014, to listen to and notice the newest innovations from Bally Technologies, one of the crucial casino industry’s top technology innovators and thought leaders.
And on the subject of new product introductions, EMPOWER 2014 didn't disappoint, with Bally using the occasion to unveil the key systems, table games and slot machine improvements and devices it is going to showcase on the upcoming Global Gaming Expo (G2E) and beyond. The development also shed some light on current trends and problems impacting the gaming industry as a whole, and the way a few of these issues can also be rectified through evolving technology.
Of course, EMPOWER 2014 also provided a progress report on where Bally Technologies stands after a slightly hectic past 12 months, which saw the corporate acquire SHFL entertainment, a provider of table games, table game products and slot machines, in a $1.3 billion deal last summer, recently purchase Dragonplay, a number one online social casino company for $51 million in June, and undergo a transformation in executive leadership when former CEO Ramesh Srinivasan was replaced by current CEO Richard “Dick” Haddrill in May.
“I have only positive things to mention about Ramesh, who have been with Bally nine years and was strongly related to the systems division” said Haddrill, during his opening remarks for EMPOWER 2014. “To be clear, there'll be no loss of emphasis at the systems business now that Ramesh has moved on. Bally is completely committed to the systems, and the good news is we've a large number of Ramesh’s great systems DNA to continue forward.”
Despite most of these changes, the last 365 DAYS has been excellent for Bally. By Haddrill’s count, over the last year the corporate added 41 new customer sites, installed 12,000 new systems connections, added 17,000 new iVIEW connections, implemented 127 new add-on products; performed 126 major product upgrades, helped 160 customers go live with its Elite Bonusing Suite product, unveiled 113 new game titles and spent $136 million on research and development. These results continue a 14-year upward trend that has seen Bally Technologies’ revenues grow by over 500 percent and share price increase by 2,500 percent. And with the SHFL entertainment merger mostly complete, Bally can now boast one of the complete lines of product within the gaming space—a mixture of table games, electronic table games, shufflers and other table products, slot machines and systems, available to operators anywhere on the planet. The hot Dragonplay purchase will only add to this reach, allowing the corporate to take its proven content and push it into another medium, on this instance, the social games realm.
“The mission statement that has driven us for the past 10 years is to become the easiest technology company serving the gaming industry,” Haddrill said. “I say we've done pretty well… we’ve grown, our quality is up, we're more focused than ever at the customer, and we're an emerging thought and innovation leader.”
To help keep this edge, Haddrill announced the formation of Bally Ventures, a brand new business unit that through strategic partnerships and investment will identify, help develop and commercialize new products and technologies for the casino space. “We simply can’t afford to transport at a regular pace [of latest product development] in today’s environment,” he said. “Bally Ventures will leverage our core strengths with the goal of having the goods that may make a difference for the gaming industry to market more quickly.”
Haddrill was also quick to confess that despite efforts reminiscent of Bally Ventures, both his company and the gaming industry as a complete still need much more viable solutions to deal with quite a few extreme market forces now coming to the fore, which he identified as social networking, Big Data and its use to focus on market, mobile technology and collaborative communication, between an organization and its customers, or on this instance, the casino and its players
“When I consult marketing technology consultants, what they are saying is most companies are being affected by these marketing forces because they are trying to cope with them as one problem when in truth they're four distinct opportunities,” Haddrill said. “Gaming is behind in these areas, and [competing types of entertainment] are blowing by us. We've got to do more.”
SYSTEMATIC CHANGES
For its part, Bally Technology is doing what it could actually to assist casinos improve their core gaming businesses, introducing new products and technologies that solve problems in gaming system, table game and slot machine disciplines.
“Customers often come to us with something they want developed so that you can make their operation more successful, or to raised entertain the customer, or improve marketing service or take casino operation to the following level, said Tom Doyle, vice chairman of systems product management for Bally Technologies. “It’s these requests that we change into our innovation and new products. Our products [are likely to] solve a massive problem for our casino customers.”
One such problem faced by large casino customers was the necessity to implement and manage progressive jackpots in a more flexible and configurable manner. In response, Bally has introduced a progressive jackpot module to its Elite Bonusing Suite (EBS). At its core, EBS Power Paytable Progressives essentially takes management of the progressive jackpot clear of the person machine and provides it to the slot system, where it may be SAS supported. This provides the slot operator greater control relating to scheduling, setting maximums and target marketing for progressive jackpots while together keeping the jackpots coin-in and symbol driven so as to maintain their tax deductible status in certain jurisdictions. EBS Power Paytable Progressives can be used to raised manage mystery-style progressive jackpots.
“This brings all of the great EBS features to a progressive jackpot,” Doyle said. “You can schedule it; you'll shove it in the market during graveyard shift if you happen to desired to or run a progressive just at the weekend or weekdays. You'll target it toward customers—if a salesmen convention comes into town for per week and also you need to run some small, quick-hit progressives, you are able to do that, that's something you can’t do very well with the standard, off-the-shelf progressives that we've got seen within the industry over the years.”
For slot operators that complained about machine downtime when a player leaves for a smoke or a meal, Bally has get a hold of Take n’ Play, which permits a slot customer to play a favourite slot machine remotely through an iPad or tablet computer from dedicated areas inside the casino facility. Take n’ Play is a game operating system that may be designed to hook right into a wireless device but still remain connected to the facility’s casino network. When a player requests remote play, an attendant shows up on the slot with a with a mobile tablet computer that may be then synched with the slot through a cue code. While playing the sport from the iPad, the slot that houses the real game goes gray to let customers are aware of it is in remote use, but still shows reel spins, jackpots and a few of the other bells and whistles related to live use. The client is then allowed to take the pc to varied geofenced areas within the resort where they are able to sit, smoke, eat and socialize, all while still playing the slot machine.
For operators seeking to add a better level of control and management to poker games and tournaments, Bally has introduced the PokerView card room management system. The system shows which customer is at what poker game within the entire facility; creates and manages waitlists; automates the bad beat jackpot process and will even manage multi-level or multi-tier poker tournaments.
SETTING THE TABLES
Poker management isn't the only table game issue Bally Technologies is tackling in the course of the introduction of recent products and technology. Similar to their slot machine brethren, pit operators are having issues managing table game progressive jackpots—indeed, these jackpot add-ons have proven so popular among customers that properties are adding an increasing number of of them. Ideally, casinos must be capable of link these types of various progressives right into a single, and larger, jackpot; but they've been unable to because nobody could get a hold of how to make the mathematics work.
At least until now, way to Bally’s new Infinilink, a software solution that simply matches up the maths of disparate game types, permitting them to feed into and payoff from a single, progressive jackpot.
“The best method to explain Infinilink is by example,” said Roger Snow, senior vice chairman of table game products for Bally Technologies. “Imagine a five-card Royal Flush in a game during which you get seven cards. It's about 20 times harder to get a Royal Flush in five cards than it's to get it in seven cards. Through Infinilink, it's 20 times more difficult, so that you are 20 times prone to win. That analogy applies if something were five times more difficult, it'd be five times easier. So it matches up perfectly, and it enables a single jackpot across any progressive table game at the casino floor.”
Shuffle Flex is another table game operations solution unveiled by Bally at EMPOWER 2014. The technology essentially solves a pressing problem faced by table game operators who depend on automatic card shufflers—getting the right kind ROI from the devices. Shuffle Flex is a module that may fit into any form of shuffler that connects the machine throughout the Cloud to a Bally server that tracks two pieces of important information—how often the shuffler is used, and the way many decks of card it shuffles. From this info, Bally is in a position to get a hold of a participation pricing structure very similar to an electrical or gas bill that only charges the user, consequently the casino, for the volume of time the shuffler is definitely in use.
Bally also unveiled Safe-Bacc, an answer designed to make baccarat play a lot more efficient and secure. Traditionally, baccarat have been dealt using an eight-deck card shuffler and an iShoe, either one of that are very efficient and secure devices. The issue was that once the shuffler was done processing the cards, they'd to be transferred manually to the iShoe, making a time drain and an excessively real security risk. Safe-Bacc, which have been years in development, essentially combines the eight-deck shuffler and iShoe into one device, improving both game pace and card security.
“Two things happen with Safe-Bacc,” Snow said. “All the scams are gone. Secondly, the design of the machine enables the casinos to shop for more economical cards they usually can save significant money. In case you are a casino in Macau, you might want to be burning through 10 to twenty million decks of cards a year. Saving 10 to twenty cents per deck is definitely worthwhile.”
MACHINE AGE
Table games weren't the one Bally business to profit from exposure to the Asian gaming market. Some of the benefits of the company’s recent integration with SHFL entertainment was that the 88 Fortunes slot machine and its Duo Fu Duo Cai progressive link were added to the Bally slot game lineup. This game and link have proven incredibly popular in Australia and Asia, and Bally will now offer the goods to U.S. properties seeking more play from Asian clientele.
“We have recently launched 88 Fortunes and its Duo Fu Duo Cai progressive link within the U.S., and we've seen similar success to what we've seen in other jurisdictions,” said Jean Venneman, vp of product management and licensing for Bally Technologies. “Generally speaking, this game and link are at 2.5 times house average for these products. We're developing follow-up titles to grow and finally replace games at the link. Hopefully this will likely give us an overly long lifespan for this product.”
Venneman was also bullish on Bally’s recently introduced ALPHA 2 Pro Wave cabinet, which gives operators a cutting-edge platform powered by the most recent technology and innovation. The slot already comes with an entire game library, way to its ability to make use of games originally designed for Bally’s ALPHA 2 Pro V32 cabinet.
Bally extensively utilized EMPOWER 2014 to announce two of the 3 new games it has created exclusively for the Wave cabinet as a way to debut at G2E. The primary is Wonder Woman, in an effort to be according to the classic 1970s television show that stared Lynda Carter.
“Wonder Woman might be an exclusive to the Wave cabinet and, I WOULD LIKE you to actually hear this part, this is a for-sale game,” Venneman told the EMPOWER audience. “We have two [Wonder Woman] games we're bringing out so that you can create a pleasant bank experience. I'M really fascinated about how this game has come together.”
The company can also be releasing Duck Dynasty for its Wave Cabinet, a certified slot game so they can feature elements from the preferred cable television series of the similar name.
From the topDick Haddrill, CEO of Bally Technology, took a while in the course of the EMPOWER Bally Systems User Conference 2014 to carry an off-the-cuff press conference and answer questions from reporters on the event. Listed here are some excerpts from that discussion. On his return to the CEO position and the departure of Ramesh Srinivasan: I think the board checked out this rather unique opportunity we had because the thought and innovation leader to become the market leader besides. I BELIEVE their view was that my experience was more relevant for that next three to 5 years. It’s an easy as that. Ramesh did a perfect job for us. On the possibility of recently acquired Dragonplay social casino company: It is without doubt one of the top 10 social networking sites and this can be a profitable business. We paid an affordable value. For us, it allows us to get our content on yet one more platform. They've done really well without the type of content we've got and so we expect so as to boost the performance of that business. It's going to also give us more experience and rapid feedback at the kinds of games those players like and the way that may benefit our other customers down the road. On the challenge of attracting a younger demographic to fit gaming: It’s only a great opportunity. It's been over-played now for quite a few years, about as a few years as I WILL BE ABLE TO remember, as a worry. For those who return TWO DECADES ago, the demographics weren’t much different than today. We assume that somebody who's 30 today won't wish to gamble once they turn 50, or won’t need to gamble in a social venue. And yet, I'D argue that the under-40 crowd is a superb target opportunity. They prefer tables. They prefer online. They prefer social and online gambling. But that isn't to mention that after they become 50 they won’t like a more social form of casino slot experience. On the mixing of hospitality and other non-gaming applications into the slot experience: Well it’s like these types of features we introduced several years ago, they has taken a short time to catch on. But one of the crucial themes of this conference is to supply great examples where people have deployed them successfully. It takes a casino partner who's willing to think through things… and spot the productivity gains from, say, drink ordering on the machine, where the player gets the beverage they would like and stays on the machine longer. That is really were the ROI comes in—you get this good, solid platform of system technology and these add-on products prevent costs and enhance the player experience. |
Read More... [Source: Slots]
No comments:
Post a Comment