IGT’S WALTER BUGNO RCM: Of course,
where the merger is undoubtedly seamless is in the technology section, where gaming content and innovation is not only at the heart of IGT but also leading from the front, with products such as SPHINX 3D, which if I remember was a SPIELO game. At G2E, IGT debuted a monster new game, SPHINX 4D, which you suggested I tried and I found that it was just perfect for the elusive millennials.
RCM: I have heard you speak passionately about
your love of Juventus, as only real football fans do. Would you say that Passion is key to business success? WALTER BUGNO: Passion is an important
ingredient to achieving success, and at IGT we are very passionate about the business of gaming. However, many other elements come into play in the course of running a successful company, such as maintaining strong customer relationships, instilling financial discipline in our operations and attracting and cultivating the best talent in the industry. As a football fan, I identify a great similarity between sports and business, as championships come to those who can join together as a unified team to achieve victory.
RCM: One of the big asks when the GTECH-IGT
merger was in the offing concerned the new name of the company, with IGT prevailing in the most pragmatic gaming decision of the last few years. Was this a difficult a decision to make, as GTECH was basically taking over IGT? WALTER BUGNO: The decision to create the new company under the IGT brand had a lot to do with the global relevance and customer acceptance of IGT. The “International Game Technology” brand is highly respected and accurately characterizes the world’s leading end-to-end gaming company. For our gaming customers, there was an immediate understanding of the decision. For our lottery customers, we made sure to take the time to reassure them that our “Customer First” focus that they had experienced from GTECH would carry over to IGT.”
What was G2E visitors’ response? WALTER BUGNO: Quite frankly, people were
blown away by the multi-sensory experience of SPHINX 4D, and we expect it to appeal to a very broad demographic. We didn’t announce or demonstrate the game until the first day of the show, so it came as a big surprise to our customers, many of whom are already generating excellent results with our TRUE 3D games. The inspiration behind the development of the SPHINX 4D game comes from watching people play IGT TRUE 3D games in casinos. It’s quite common to see players reach out as if they are grabbing elements from the game, such as the cascading coins that seem to pop out of the screen. Our game designers thought, ‘what if we could actually create a tactile element, so that when players reach out to touch something in the games, they actually feel something?’ The teams researched air haptic and gesture-based technologies, found a way to implement them in a game, and SPHINX 4D was born. We’re really excited to continue developing this concept so we can build on the international success of our TRUE 3D category, which now has more than 10 titles and 2,000 games in the field.”
DECEMBER 2016 37
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