ARUZE
thought behind what we could do to target relatively younger demographics in a casino that have discretionary money to play. We designed that game in a six-unit configuration. A lot of the industry said, that’s going to be pretty tough because that’s a big footprint. However, the thought process behind the configuration was when people our age go out to casinos we don’t usually go out by ourselves, we go in a group with our spouses and friends. We designed games like Paradise Fishing as a communal game that people could go and have fun playing together, instead of as individuals. That’s worked really well in our favour. That was the ice-breaker for Aruze Gaming in
North America, and then internationally. Then we took some old technology – the stepper – and completely re-engineered it from the inside out and renamed it the Innovator, a five-reel high-speed multi-light game unit that has basically taken us to the next level. The stepper market was on its way out and we brought it back in a multi-denominational form. That really took off, and our casino footprint started to grow rapidly. Most operators will put one Paradise Fishing in, which is six games. Now we see with the Innovator line we are capturing huge percentages of market share per individual casino. We also have two other business segments that
have really caught fire. The next will be our video line. If you look at it historically, Paradise Fishing was really groundbreaking for us, then we released the Innovator, then about 18 months ago we put out a video line called Ultra Stack. Right now we have about 29 categories or titles available, and it’s absolutely flown out of our doors. Finally, we developed our electronic table games [ETGs] which were done with the Macau market in mind. Our biggest market in Macau is our ETGs, with lucky Sic Bo, Shoot To Win Craps, Lucky Big Wheel, all of which are beautiful attractions for a casino where we took games from the past and re-invented them. They’ve also taken off really well in North America. About 50% of our shipments are now Innovators and video in the slots sector.
CI: Is Asia really big for you? KA: It’s absolutely huge for us. In Macau, we believe we have number two spot for market share in the area.
CI: That’s a growing slot market too… KA: It is. It was all table games and nobody playing
slots, but in the last few years that has significantly changed. A lot of slot machines have taken off in that market; we’ve jumped on that, and strengthened that with our ETGs. We have product all over Asia, we have great
penetration there. It goes back to our Asian R&D department, they understand the market very well.
CI: Europe is a difficult market, with so many
different languages and cultures – how are you getting on in Europe?
KA: One thing we do well is we start with good
infrastructure. That’s important because we want to give a good response to our customers. We want it laid out so we can give really good customer service first and foremost. We have hired a new sales manager for the territory, and have signed some good distribution deals as well. We have market share growing fairly fast in France, Italy, Turkey and Cyprus.
CI: What’s your domestic – North American – market share? KA: We are approved in around 45% of the
markets in North America. In that 45% we hold about a 12% ship-share, and we are ecstatic about that. It’s huge for a company that’s only really been here since 2009. We’ve done a bang-up job creating the right infrastructure so our customers can trust us to support them; we have key initiatives with our customers too. For example, we have the Aruze University in Las Vegas which is our final assembly plant and we invite slot technicians to come in once per quarter to learn more about our products. We provide lunch and a three- hour course, informing them of new updates, new platforms and guidance on how to work on our games. We are in tune with not just the buyer, but the gatekeepers in the casinos.
CI: What drives the company’s success? KA: What really drives a good company is two things. Passion and teamwork. With those two key fundamental objectives we believe we can accomplish anything.
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