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 spot the newest innovations from Bally Technologies, probably the most casino industry’s top technology innovators and thought leaders.
And relating to new product introductions, EMPOWER 2014 didn't disappoint, with Bally using the occasion to unveil the foremost systems, table games and slot machine improvements and devices it's 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 will 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 were 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 numerous Ramesh’s great systems DNA to continue forward.”
Despite these types of changes, the last ONE YEAR was superb 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 vital 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 new 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 perfect technology company serving the gaming industry,” Haddrill said. “I say we have now 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 in spite of efforts corresponding to Bally Ventures, both his company and the gaming industry as an entire still need much more viable solutions to deal with a lot of 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 check with marketing technology consultants, what they are saying is most companies are suffering from these marketing forces because they are attempting to cope with them as one problem when actually they're four distinct opportunities,” Haddrill said. “Gaming is behind in these areas, and [competing kinds of entertainment] are blowing by us. We've got to do more.”
SYSTEMATIC CHANGES
For its part, Bally Technology is doing what it could possibly 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 if you want to make their operation more successful, or to higher 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 inclined to] solve an immense 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 offers the slot operator greater control in the case of scheduling, setting maximums and target marketing for progressive jackpots while jointly keeping the jackpots coin-in and symbol driven as a way 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 the entire great EBS features to a progressive jackpot,” Doyle said. “You can schedule it; you'll be able to shove it available 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 every week and also you need to run some small, quick-hit progressives, you are able to do that, that is 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 true game goes gray to let customers comprehend it is in remote use, but still shows reel spins, jackpots and some of the other bells and whistles related to live use. The client is then allowed to take the pc to numerous geofenced areas inside the resort where they may be able to sit, smoke, eat and socialize, all while still playing the slot machine.
For operators trying 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. Just like 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 increasingly of them. Ideally, casinos have to be capable of link these kinds 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 mathematics of disparate game types, letting them feed into and payoff from a single, progressive jackpot.
“The best solution 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 likely to win. That analogy applies if something were five times more difficult, it might 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 during 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, for that reason 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 was dealt using an eight-deck card shuffler and an iShoe, either one of which can be 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 overly 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. If you're a casino in Macau, it's good to be burning through 10 to twenty million decks of cards a year. Saving 10 to twenty cents per deck is unquestionably worthwhile.”
MACHINE AGE
Table games weren't the one Bally business to learn 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 at last replace games at the link. Hopefully this may 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 newest 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 so that you can debut at G2E. The primary is Wonder Woman, to be able to be in accordance with 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 can be 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 with how this game has come together.”
The company may 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 through the EMPOWER Bally Systems User Conference 2014 to carry a casual press conference and answer questions from reporters on the event. Listed below 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 in addition. I BELIEVE their view was that my experience was more relevant for that next three to 5 years. It’s an effortless as that. Ramesh did a super job for us. On the opportunity of recently acquired Dragonplay social casino company: It is among the top 10 social networking sites and this is a profitable business. We paid an inexpensive value. For us, it allows us to get our content on yet one more platform. They have got done rather well without the type of content we've got and so we expect in an effort to boost the performance of that business. It'll also give us more experience and rapid feedback at the varieties of games those players like and the way that would 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 various years, about as a few years as I WILL BE ABLE TO remember, as a worry. In the event you return TWO DECADES ago, the demographics weren’t much different than today. We assume that somebody who's 30 today is not going to wish to gamble after 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 great 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 combination of hospitality and other non-gaming applications into the slot experience: Well it’s like most of these features we introduced several years ago, they has taken a short while to catch on. But some of the 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. |
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