INCREDIBLE TECHNOLOGIES
pushing into the California, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan markets in the US in addition to furthering our presence in offshore on cruise ships and in the Caribbean. We’re in the process of seeking approval in Nevada, which would be the crown jewel for us, and we’re We’re also researching international markets, and forming key alliances and partnerships, speaking to distributors. We think our games could have appeal overseas, because of the new look and the new technology that’s in them. They would be exciting and engaging for players.
CI: So languages aside, you potentially have a
global model in one machine – an Asian player might turn the volatility to High, while a North American player might have it on Steady and play for entertainment as much as to win. What markets are you looking at specifically? DS: The markets we’re looking at areWe certainly
watching the Asia, Macau market closely – it would bebeing number one on our intertanational the radar. I can’t give you any more details on that just now, but because of the volatility angle we think Magic Touch could succeed there. Everybody keeps talking about trends in gaming,
saying the next big thing will be community-based games, or skill games – we think it’s going to be an amalgamation of everything. In skill-based games, you can’t truly affect the game with skill at this point; it’s only sense of skill, or smoke and mirrors to give the payer the feeling they’re having an impact on the game. We believe what we’re doing is innovative because nobody is offering the type of product where you change the math model. You literally are changing it every time you play, both when you choose the volatility and when you ramp up your line bet. As player play bets more lines, it actually changes the payback percentage of the game – we have a three per cent swing in the percentage, so it might go from 87 per cent with a one-line bet or 90 per cent with a 17-linemax bet, for example. It’s our job as developers to make sure that game
feels as it should feel. If our player selects high volatility and it doesn’t feel like it’s playing a high- volatility game, we’ve not done our job. We spent a lot of time and money wondering how to make it feel right and that was tough, but it’s been very effective so far.
CI: Casinos are great drivers for technology, but
can often be slow to pick up the newest technology. Has that been an obstacle for you? DS: There’s often a sense of sticking with what you
know, that’s safe, and we’ve had to go head-to-head with that. Also, the economic climate hasn’t helped things. People are being very frugal with their dollars and they’re making sure that whatever they spend them on is going to earn them money. At the same time though, you can go to just about any casino and play the same products, so any way to differentiate yourself and your casino is considered a great
investment right now. We’ve been using that to our advantage. But because there are some casinos that may not be ready for our most innovative technologies, we’ve created a Traditional Collection of Magic Touch slot games which we look forward to debuting at G2E this year.
CI: It’was a good advert for you being installed
in the Barona Casino – they’re great adopters of technology, but not for technology’s sake. DS: They were great partners for us in that trial
period, and their customers seem to reacted to new things positively. We learned a lot from testing there. We also tested on multiple cruise ships, which was
terrific because on cruise ships the regulations are less intense so we could trial the games in their relatively early stages, to make sure we were at least going in the right direction. Barona was our first major land-based partner
casino, and the Horseshoe was the second. While there have been others, We didn’t go into a huge number of casinos because we wanted to test for quality of partners, not quantity. If we went with too many casinos, and wanted to make changes, that would mean doing that in lots of sites. The other part of it is that because our games are so adjustable, we needed partners that would give us the player data, so we can assess what to change and streamline.
CI: What’s next for IT? DS: I expect to see the company enjoy rapid growth
within the next few years as we forge into the casino market. You’re going to be hearing a lot from us. We’re putting our toes in the water in the Illinois
Video Gaming marketplace, preparing for the after the legislation to be approved change. We’ve got a completely new line of Magic Touch machines, for the state of Illinois. We’ve started the marketing process for that but not the selling process, because as the state has a lot of work to do before we can. Outside of casino games and coin-op games, we’re
also involved in developing iPhone/iPad applications and games, and home console games, for the Wii, for example. It helps us stay on the cutting edge of what players want as developers. We’re bringing new products to G2E, including a
new slant-top, bar top and upright cabinets. – well, it’s not really aI’m particularly excited about debuting our new Breeze gaming cabinets, as they represent slant-top as such, it’s a crossover category. It’s been an exciting, two-years worth of work program to develop this cabinet. All of our games have been redeveloped for HD compatibility and our upright features our first dual-monitor cabinet. It has big high-def screens, the seating position is leaning back instead of hunched over, it’s got lots of great features. In addition, we’ll be bringing 9 new slot titles, 5 new Keno games and a fantastic new card video game call Upper Hand Hold ‘Em – our first to feature an element of skill. There are new slot titles, too – lots Lots of exciting things to see forom us at G2E, you won’t want to miss it.
OCTOBER 2010 37
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