Focus REFLEX -
REFLEX GAMING
RESPONDING TO MARKET STIMULUS
UK games developer, Reflex Gaming, is flexing its muscles in the big leagues, as one of the major games supplier in the UK gaming market
If you're reading this magazine anywhere outside the UK, it's unlikely that you'll have heard of Reflex Gaming. Even in its domestic market the Newark-based firm has kept a low profile since set-up in 2004, but all that came to an end last year. Reflex Gaming is currently the largest producer of gaming machines for the UK market. Through the second half of 2012 company supplied more Category C games to operations than any other company, domestic or international.
Reflex has seized an opportunity in the UK market that arose as existing suppliers exited traditional market models, specifically Barcrest shifting to digital-only production and the introduction of a dongle-only policy by Bell Fruit Games. As a result there were few entities remaining to pick up the baton in the UK high-tech AWP sector and it was Reflex that took a huge share of the marketplace, putting companies such as Bell Fruit Games firmly into second place.
There are those in the UK gaming industry that will tell you that Reflex Gaming's success is borne of these external factors, but the problem with this view is that to be in the right place, at the right time with the right product, isn't about luck. While the UK street gaming sector continued along a path of ever diminishing returns with infrastructures that had failed to adapt to the changes taking place around them, Reflex Gaming right-sized its business from the start.
Reflex's Quentin Stott and Simon Dawson formerly worked for Bell Fruit Games and established its subsidiary QPS. The company they created in the British Midlands is a lean, fit-for-purpose and capable gaming machine developer that has quietly gone about its business producing great games. As the shifting market in the UK stripped away the profitability of the major AWP manufacturers, Reflex has conversely grown stronger. Having traditionally rebuilt cabinets from the industry giants, this year Reflex is to launch its own cabinet and platform, unveil its own digital gaming offer and has already
February 2013 PAGE 54
launched its first App for iPad and iPhone.
SIMON DAWSON, Reflex Gaming.
“We concentrate
upon our R&D and have tried to take as much of the
market as we can while making sure to not over-extend ourselves.”
Since the launch of Alice’s Wonderland mid-2012, Reflex Gaming has been consolidating its position as the leading supplier of Category C machines in the UK market. The company is now producing up to 200 machines a week, a capacity which equates to over two-thirds of the total weekly machine volume sales in the UK. “Market volumes for Cat C machines are just under 300 a week, so we now have the lion’s share of that, thanks to the support of our customers," states Mr. Stott. "We are intent on continuing to supply market-leading games and we have the resources to do so. We have proved categorically that we are gaining real momentum in the pub retail sector. We have ramped up production significantly in order to keep up with current demand, as well as making sure we have the capacity to drive out new and exciting products. In fact, the current levels of effort and success have meant that we already have provisions in place to be able to increase our production levels to new heights in 2013,” says Mr. Stott.
QUENTIN STOTT, Reflex Gaming.
“We have proved categorically that
we are gaining real momentum in the pub retail sector.
We have ramped up production
significantly in order to keep up with
current demand, as well as making
sure we have the capacity to drive out new and
exciting products”.
As G3 went to print, Reflex Gaming already had a full order book for its latest titles. “Production continues across all high tech models including Alice’s Wonderland, Lady Luck Double Take and Chops & Change,” continues Mr. Stott. “Double Agent and The PayMaker are off to a flying start on test sites and we are poised for these games to continue our sales drive into February and March,” he adds. Reflex is keeping the pressure up, as a further two new test models are already lined up for the start of 2013.
THE UK MARKET Annualised machine sales in the UK are between 12-13,000 according to UK trade
association BACTA, though the actual figure is probably closer to 10,000. Reflex is presently supplying around 200 machines per week into the market including pub, club, arcade and bingo, with the vast majority going into single sites. These figures put Reflex squarely in the driving seat in the UK with BFG/Astra in second spot, then Electrocoin and JPM (the Gauselmann Group announced last year that Blueprint will commence machine production in 2013).
The exit of many of the big players from the analogue high tech sector in the UK created a product vacuum, but it was the introduction of the dongle that has really
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