PDF Indian Gaming 2018: Game Technology Showcase

CONVENTION COVERAGE

Indian Gaming 2018: Game Technology Showcase

On the show floor at the NIGA convention in Las Vegas, we spoke with executives from the leading game technology companies about their new games and innovations. Here is what they had to say...

Robert Perry, SVP of Sales AGS

Our tribal gaming customers are some of the best in the business, and we're still obsessed with continuing to offer them new, high-indexing Class II and Class III products across their slot floors. At this year's NIGA, we proved that obsession yet again with the debut of our Orion Slant cabinet, our new ICON and Orion Portrait games, and our multi-level Xtreme Jackpots progressive system. These new innovations showcase the depth and diversity of our development team and our ability to introduce groundbreaking products that make a real impact on casino floors. We're confident that these new solutions, built on proven product lines, will create long-term value for our customers.

Nathan Drane, Vice President of Commercial Strategy, Games Aristocrat aristocrat-

We launched two new hardware configurations at NIGA available for release in May. The first is Helix XT, which is our new upright portrait cabinet. The second is our Helix Tower, which features a 55-inch screen, across our Helix+ footprint. From a hardware standpoint, they're both very exciting ? but it's really all about what our customers can do with those products and the content on them. The Helix XT is playing into a trend we're seeing in the market around upright portraits. The Arc, which has been a very successful portrait for us, is a slant footprint. The Helix XT has the same footprint as an upright Helix 23" or Helix+. The benefit of that is more space in casino floors ? you can put it on bases. Plus, it has a new

portrait screen ? a 43-inch curving 4K-resolution screen. This is a great canvas for game designers and game developers. We've also got a new 15.5-inch virtual button deck with an LCD bash, which we haven't done before in game sales. We are also doing a lot with lighting to make it brighter on the casino floor.

Content-wise, we launched Helix XT with Buffalo Max, our latest version of Buffalo available in the game sales area, which is really exciting for us. Buffalo Gold was our previous iteration, and it's been one of our most successful games in the last three years. Buffalo Max extends upon that with a new `Bet Up' mechanic. We launched Wonder 4 Boost, another great brand for us. You can play four games at once, and it offers a bonus boost for up to eight games at once, which has never been done before by Aristocrat. It plays perfectly into the portrait canvas. We also launched Gold Stacks, which has been a very successful brand, and we've extended it and upped the cost to cover to 88 cents, which is really a market trend. We've also added linked progressives, which all operators are now asking for. With four unique games and eight back catalogue games, we have a total of 12 games on launch for Helix XT.

We also launched Helix Tower, which comes in a Helix+ footprint with a tower across the top featuring four 55-inch, 4K resolution screens. With Helix Tower, we are bringing some of those consumer electronics into the game sales space. It features linked progressives on the top and integrated media, and is available in the for sale space. On launch we're using Mighty Cash, one of our best-performing game brands at the moment. It utilizes our Hold & Spin mechanic and a progressive, so it fits this canvas perfectly. Helix Tower looks stunning and will stand out ? not only from the perspective of a player sitting at it, but it will have gravity across the whole floor.

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Justin Arcemont, Managing Director of Global Sales Aruze

factors every year and our development studios are energized and creating new game themes that our casino customers and their patrons are really excited about and playing. I'm very excited about the future. We have even more great product coming out that will continue to enhance our market share and help our casino customers provide great gaming entertainment for their guests.

Mike Dreitzer, President Gaming Arts

The most exciting thing for us is the launch of our new Muso Triple-27. We just launched it at NIGA, and the reception from customers has been great.

On the electronic table games side, we are very excited about the evolution of our craps table, Omni Table, which is our second iteration of this product. The final version will be at G2E, and this is a progression from what we showed at G2E last year.

On the V40s, we have additions to our Ancient Wheels series. We also have Burning Wheel, which is out and doing really well, as well as a follow up Wheel of Riches and Moonshine Money. In all of our cabinet lines, we have themes that we are very excited about.

Ed Peters, Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing Everi

We had a wonderful NIGA 2018 ? a lot of quality meetings with our customers and partners across Native American gaming. We are very excited to have shown our Super Bingo and Ultimate Bingo product, which is our slot product ? a new type of device for the industry that has been received very well. We showcased our core product, some of our promotional products as well as our Keno product.

The entire team at Gaming Arts looks forward to continuing on our path to make more and more of an impact in the industry and we have been very happy to be able to demonstrate a large diversity of product. We have products that can be bundled and put together to present a very diverse and complete solution for the gaming floor for our customers. NIGA 2018 has allowed us to demonstrate that. Z4, the HDPoker product, has been received very well. When you put it all together ? Gaming Arts and Z4 ? we are able to offer end-to-end solutions, and the show demonstrated that.

The advancements we are making in our games have just been incredible. We continue to come out with new form

Dallas Orchard, SVP & Chief Product Officer, Gaming IGT

One thing we are most excited aboutas it relates to our tribal customers, is the launch of our new cabinet ? the CrystalDual 27. On display in North America for the first time at NIGA 2018, it is going straight into production with a new line-up of very

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CONVENTION COVERAGE

well tested, high-performing games. Getting this box released and rolled out was key for this trade show and the rest of the year for us.

The CrystalCurve Ultra, which is a beautiful cabinet, houses our 4D technology. We've recently released Sphinx 4D and are on the verge of launching Ghostbusters. In the non4D CurveUltra, we are really happy with the performance of The Voice and The Goonies, and are backing that up with the release of Alfred Hitchcock and Blake Shelton. These new games are a very exciting part of the portfolio for us, and there is a lot of innovation inside that mix.

progressive prizes. This can be either standalone or linked, and features nicely on this oversized cabinet that we call Concerto Opus. With the large 4K display, it is quite vibrant to see.

We also have the Strike Zone games ? Star Watch Magma and Star Watch Fire. These are rising quickly to the top of the performance list at properties and are a follow on to Celestial Moon Riches and Celestial Sun Riches. These allow players to commit to bigger areas for extra bonuses, allowing people to play to their desired volatility. Additionally, the latest game to come out is Agent Magnifying Jackpots, which also has Strike Zone reels that you can buy to help you win up to the supreme jackpot and scales with your bet.

My favorite game right now is Star Watch Magma. It's so much fun to play. There's a nice contrast between the orange symbols on the black background that are your regular pay lines, and when those white stars with the "what you see is what you get" prize award, or reel spin or progressive appears, it really pops and is exciting. It has a great rhythm to it.

David Orrick, Director of Industry Relations Merkur Gaming U.S. merkur-

Steve Walther, Senior Director, Marketing & Product Management Konami Gaming gaming.

We were very excited to have the Concerto Opus cabinet at the front of our booth, featuring a 65" 4K display. We showcased Solstice Celebration Triple Sparkle and Riches with Daikoku Triple Sparkle, our new-featured 4K game themes, with options for standalone and linked progressive configurations. Solstice Celebration and Riches with Daikoku have been so popular for Konami because of that double action stack symbol. Now, Triple Sparkle has a third action stack symbol, so it's a triple action stack symbol, and that triple action stack has the opportunity to win one of the integrated

Charles Hiten and David Orrick

I want to congratulate NIGA for bringing the trade show for the first time in its 33-year history to Las Vegas. Why does that excite us particularly? Because the product range we showcased at NIGA was created, as we like to say, `in America by Americans for Americans' ? more specifically it was created here by our team at Sunshine Games based in Las Vegas. We had eight of their creations at NIGA 2018, and an extra two games from High 5 Games, based in New York. The entire booth was, `America for the Americans.'

Out of a choice of ten games, it's quite hard to select a favorite, because if you asked ten people visiting our booth, I would venture to say you would get ten different answers. I'll throw my 10 cents worth in, which is our new game Striking Fortunes. The entire range of games has been a huge success in what we set out at the show to do ? which was to seek feedback and opinion from attendees that visited our booth.

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We ran a little competition with some prizes to thank people for their assistance in giving us that feedback. We'll go back now and analyze all of that. We weren't looking for `attaboys,' we weren't looking for, `yay man, that's great.' We were looking for honest opinions and we've received those. We've had areas where we can say, `Well you know, somebody thought that, so how can we make it better, or how can we incorporate that into something else?' As an exercise, it's been fantastic for us, and I just thank the show organizers for putting on such a great event. By the time we get to San Diego, CA, next year, watch us go!

Kathleen McLaughlin, Vice President of Marketing, North America Novomatic Americas

Mike Darley, CEO Next Gaming nextgaming.co

What I noticed at NIGA 2018 was the acceptance of skillbased games. It's starting to be a topic that people are embracing because those of us in the gaming world are successfully articulating how these games work. They are engaging to the player and they make money. This is making sense to the casinos now, and they are not intimidated about introducing skill-based games on the slot floor.

We have an opportunity to introduce new slot products to people of all ages and demographics, and our products have a wide birth for demographics, which attendees saw at our booth. The people that came by are from casinos large and small. Our goal is to put products in that produce generally as much as a slot machine, so operators feel comfortable introducing a new product.

We have important IP licenses with Atari and Taito. In addition to Asteroids, we recently signed Missile Command and Tempest. Both Asteroids and Tempest are in Ready Player One, the new movie by Steven Spielberg from the book by Ernest Cline. If you talk about marque value and timing, what's better than that? Other providers are approaching us because they know we've executed games well. We've valued these licensed brands, and now some of the other major Atari's and Taito's have come to us and said, `this is really cool, how about this?'

We were very excited to launch three brand-new cabinets in North America ? the Panthera Curve 1.43, which is a 43" upright curved screen on our Enchanted Fortunes Linked Jackpot; the V.I.P. Lounge Curve 1.43, which is absolutely stunning and features a space optimized format and curve touchscreen; and our Panthera 2.27, our double-screen lounge version that is much larger with an interactive topper. It has been very exciting to bring these relevant cabinets and the incredible technology within them to NIGA 2018.

Voodoo Fortunes is my favorite game right now. I love the look and art of the game, and the way it plays ? it is stunning and has such dimension and depth in the way it was designed. There are all of these really subtle features that draw your eye. Another fantastic highlight for us is MacGyver, which is our second license. We've done some really creative things with the bonuses and in the interactivity with customers. We did market research in Minnesota and Wisconsin at Potawatomi, and it tested incredibly well with players, so we're really excited about that game. Then of course, From Dusk Till Dawn is a cult phenomenon ? we've had incredible reaction to it from our customers. The game was recently approved in North America and we start rolling it out in May.

Kevin Sheehan, Senior Advisor Scientific Games

We have a lot of very hot games right now, and the exciting part is that we have a lot more coming throughout the rest of 2018 and more in 2019 to be excited about.

Our recent acquisition of NYX could turn out to be the most perfectly timed transaction in history if the Supreme Court ruling comes the way a lot of people think it might.

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In a go-to market scenario, we're the ones that can really hand customers the solutions as efficiently as possible. With the platforms that we have at NYX, those could be solutions for gaming, which would be exciting.

Our social business is doing great. We're just rolling out a new Monopoly game, and it's coming out of the gate the strongest of anything we've done so far. All of the other games are doing terrific too. Everything is on fire. The Spicerack Media acquisition we did last year is way outperforming what we expected.

Each one of the businesses is working correctly right now, which is pretty unique when you've got so many different pieces. We've done a lot of work in 2018 that will drive growth in 2019, so we're confident next year is going to be another fantastic year as well.

The tribal market is critically important to Scientific Games. It's a major part of our business, and we've always been proud of the relationship there. We had our whole team at NIGA 2018 to make sure that we listened to everyone and are doing the right things to be on the cutting edge of what they're looking for ? so that we can continue the long-term relationship that we've had.

progressive in June and the neat thing about it is in addition to being our first licensed progressive, it's a penny-bet and modeled to hit the progressive every two weeks or so. It's modeled after the Fast Cash progressive from Aristocrat on the Class III side. This will be a whole different area in the mechanical reel market for us as well.

Tim Stuart, President/CEO Video King

James Starr, EVP of Sales VGT



We have a whole new video line of Ovation products and are bringing a lot of the Aristocrat math and design over into Class II. We are also bringing hardware over in the form of the Helix+ cabinet, and porting some of the Class III titles that have been very popular into Class II. At NIGA 2018, we showcased Buffalo Gold and Wild Panda Gold, which are both on the Arc cabinet and will be available in July.

On the legacy side, we are still developing the mechanical reels. We are very excited about VGT's first major licensed brand with the PBR (Professional Bull Rider's) Association Wide Area Progressive (WAP). We are being supported by all of the famous bull riders, including Ryan Dirteater, who is a member of the Cherokee Nation. We will be launching this

We have a new universal platform that will allow other manufacturers to deploy their Class II and Class III game content on our tablets. We currently have 60,000 plus devices rented across the world. This new platform will allow other manufacturers to approach us, and they are, with their own content.

We also have a new wallboard called FreedomPlay, which is a display for bingo and advertising. Traditionally, in bingo rooms, wallboards or flashboards have been run to call the bingo balls. Now, in the digital age, we can send signals from our servers to put anything we want onto FreedomPlay ? much like an electronic board at a football stadium. It's completely digital and wireless, and we can tie it to the bingo game, or anything a tribe wants to advertise. They can be hung all over the casino posting bingo numbers for specialty games and also for running advertising. ?

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