G2E 2016
connection to Epicentral, and EpiCentral SE, another new product we have announced. Finally we have added a MicroSD slot, so the printer can be updated with a MicroSD card. That would be done on the casino floor. It makes the firmware process very mobile and easy across the casino floor.” So what exactly are the benefits of being able
to print at 300dpi? Tracey said: “With adding 300dpi printing to a TITO ticket, we have solved an industry problem which is acceptance rates by bill validators. Over time, a validator’s acceptance rate falls as its head gets dirty. We can increase the time it is going to provide high acceptance rates by the increased quality of the TITO ticket. If you look at our cashout voucher, 300dpi gives you cleaner white lines and straighter black lines in the barcode; we have already tested it and we believe it will have a significant impact. “This will roll out in the next year; we truly
believe casino swill want the higher print quality also for the greater graphics ability for Epicentral as well.” That was not all, though. An addition to the Epicentral suite took a bow, with Epicentral SE. This Systems Edition version allows the operator’s CMS to control marketing comps with Epicentral simply the delivery method. This widens the scope for use of Epicentral hugely, and should be a huge bonus to any casino with a savvy marketing team.
VizExplorer VizExplorer is one of those companies that,
when you hear about what they do, you think ‘why has nobody done that before?’ Put simply, they take the huge amount of data a casino generates, and put it into a form that makes it both easy to digest and easy to act on. Trent Dang, VizExplorer’s Senior Industry Specialist, explained to Casino International: “We are an operational intelligence company; we differentiate that from business intelligence by saying, we believe business intelligence is reports, graphs, numbers. What we do is to take it one step further – now that you have all this data, how do you make money with it? That’s the basic idea of how and why we exist. So how do you make money from all that information you get from slot machines, loyalty cards and the like? Casino management systems are not really user-friendly, they were built to be databases. But all over the world, with new casinos being built, our customers need to use that data to become more competitive in their market. We give you easy access to your data from those legacy systems that almost everyone is using; we have a bunch of visualisations that sit on top of all that data to help you digest that data, and operationalise it. “In our demonstration here at G2E, you can
42 SEPTEMBER 2016
see a representation of a casino floor using various metrics; this way your slot manager can get great information about their slot floor. You can look around without having to sort through Excel files or Access databases, everything I need to know is on this. I can see what slots are doing well and which are not, which are thriving despite what might be thought of as a poor location, we can see all of that machine’s performance data to be able to optimise the floor. So without hardcore analysis, we can see opportunities to improve the floor and therefore our revenue. “Because of our unique visualisations, small gains can be made from simply displaying information in an easy to digest way. “You can also see your key players, who is
playing and how, what are the needs of those players, and it can all be done in real time – and that is proving really successful. We are basically making the analysis of
complex data very, very simple, so important decisions can be made more quickly, more effectively and more efficiently.”
GameCo Probably the most visible of the companies
working toward a skill gaming solution, GameCo opted not to exhibit in a traditional sense, but instead had their EGM in the expo’s ‘integrated resort experience’. The game on show was a first-person shooter, with slick graphics and easy to pick up gameplay, everything a game outside the home should be. We sat down with Blaine Graboyes to talk gaming – and to ask about how the integrated resort experience was working for them. Blaine told CI: ”It’s worked well for us this year, but next year we will have a larger presence. We’re a small company right now, very scrappy, every dollar should be going into the game. We have found such a huge demand from the casinos, we are already engaged with the vast majority of our customers; we’re really here to engage with the press and share our product with the world. Next year we will have eight or ten games, we will have much more content to show the world, but for this year it’s working really well.” They might be a small company at the moment, but they have big plans. Blaine added: “We want to provide a turnkey plug-and-play solution for casinos; right now it’s what they are used to, so we want to give them something where they can take out a slot machine and put in our EGM.” Key to their strategy is to cherry pick the
finest games around and turn them into something that works in a casino environment. Blaine elaborated: “None of our games will be developed in-house, our strategy is to license existing games or engines and work with
outside developers to port them to our platform. We make the platform that handles all of the back end, the peripherals, the casino economics, the regulatory, the compliance; in the case of what we have here we worked with a developer in Madison, Wisconsin, Human Head Studios.”
But Blaine’s focus is like a laser, as he
explained: “Right now we are focussed on fixing the biggest problem in the casino industry, which is that slots generate 75% of casino revenue but have been declining or stagnant for the last two decades; we want to create this plug-and-play solution so that casinos can get in to the videogame gambling space. Then over time we can look at other solutions and other products.” As we mentioned earlier in this show report,
tournament play is likely to be a key factor in the acceptance and growth of any skill gaming product in casinos – and GameCo have realised this, with product focussed on that arriving next year. Blaine concluded: “We will be producing a tournament controller and leaderboard system in 2017, which will network the machines together and make it easy to run big eSports style tournaments on the casino floor.
“Once we get the machines on the floor,
that’s the beach head for everything else to happen.”
e-gaming
e-gaming’s Urbain Thewissen (below) visited G2E in Las Vegas and met the company’s Latin American business partners from Mexico, Colombia, Panama and Peru; Urabin also told CI that he engaged in very interesting meetings with possible partners in other Latin American countries. Further installations in Latin America are going forward with Mexico, Colombia and Panama as
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