I live in Southern California, where real buffalo still roam on the grounds of some of the reservations where our NA casinos are located. And every year in SoCal, between April 1 and May 15, readers of the SoCal Gaming Guide cast their ballots for the 2015 Reader’s Choice of the best NA casino and best slots to play there. Barona, naturally, was voted everyone’s favorite casino.
And, this year, the overwhelming favorite for the best slot company, taking first place in eleven of fifteen categories, was Aristocrat. The company’s Buffalo Stampede topped the competition for the best video slot, the best bonus round, the luckiest slot, the best slot graphics, and the best penny slot. Another Aristocrat title was a big winner. The Walking Dead was named to the list of top three in the categories of Best Video Slot, Best Progressive Slot, Best Video Bonus Round, and Best Slot Graphics. Aristocrat’s CanCan de Paris and Mr. Cashman were also winners in the Best Penny Slots and Best Classic Slots, respectively. A great win for the Aussies
Aristocrat will be sharing a booth this year at G2E with Video Gaming Technologies which it acquired in October, 2014. In our third installment of G2E, let’s take a look at what these two companies will be showcasing for us if we attend G2E in Las Vegas at the end of the month.
Aristocrat/VGT
aristocrat-us.com
G2E Booth #1141
If any slot manufacturer could be said to be trying to have something for everyone, it is Aristocrat. The Australian company, whose history we covered in part 2 along with Ainsworth, offers games for every type of player. Players who prefer more of an entertainment experience. Players who love the thrill of frequent jackpots. People who love progressives - yes, IGT has some competition! Players who want an immersive experience with their favorite movie or TV characters. Players who love the old core games and Mr. Cashman’s surprise appearances. Aristocrat has something for them all according to their press releases.
Many of the games highlighted in recent press releases are games we have already seen on our casino floors this summer. Some of them are games I wrote about last fall. At G2E this year Aristocrat is showcasing its new gaming hardware. They’ll present the ginormous Behemoth cabinet housing Buffalo Stampede. And they’ll show us their Arc Double Cabinet housing entertainment themes such as Britney Spears and the Big Bang Theory. You can already enjoy these games in many casinos and on YouTube videos. These recent releases will soon be followed by other games based on licensed brands. They include Buffalo Grand, the latest version of the Buffalo game, HBO’s Game of Thrones, and the holiday favorite A Christmas Story.
One new Aristocrat offering that you may find interesting is Lightning Link or Lightning Cash. These are Aristocrat’s very first Linked and Stand-alone Progressive games to feature selectable multi-denominations. Players select either 1 cent or 2 cents for a 50 line game (500 credit max bet), or 5 cents or 10 cents for a 25-line game (250 credits max bet). The progressive jackpot is the same whichever denomination you choose, but the bonuses are proportional to the denomination. There are four fun titles to choose from: Happy Lantern, High Stakes, Magic Pearl, and Sahara Gold. News releases say the games are designed for players who enjoy frequent jackpots, and a medium-high volatility range.
Other items to look for are Cashman Fever II and Cashman Takes Flight, 5 level progressives based on Buffalo and Five Dragons. Superman the Movie, Sons of Anarchy, and Can-Can Paris have already made it to the casinos. Ted, based on Seth McFarland’s raunchy 2012 comedy about a living adult teddy bear might show his face any time.
A lot of what Aristocrat brings to G2E this year is for the casinos, not their players, and is called Oasis 360 system. This is a system to keep casino operators connected to their customers on property and off. It allows casinos to track customer behavior when they patronize affiliates and strategic partners, empowering them with crucial data to meaningfully reward customers.
I’m not sure I like this. I don’t like being tracked. I hope it doesn’t mean any more than modifying the Total Rewards system to allow tracking Caesar’s play at Harrah’s would. Those of you attending G2E should try to find out more for me.
The system’s ONE LINK technology works on any suppliers system. It allows operators to centrally configure, manage, and display table signage. It provides flexible slot bouncing including mystery bonuses, magic-hour bonuses, and Hot Hand Bonus Poker. I don’t know what any of that is - and it probably doesn’t mean anything to most of us players - but the casino operators will probably think it’s great.
HALO is another offering for the casinos that will let them manage their customer loyalty programs. They will be able to easily manage tier promotion and demotion, and it will allow staff to take the player’s club to the casino floor to reprint cards, issue comps, add comps, enroll new players and more.
Aristocrat will also be showing their new beverage ordering system, Drinks on Tap. This system will allow players to order and pay for drinks from their electronic gaming machines (EGM) and will let you even add a tip.
MOBILE CONCIERGE is Aristocrats fancy name for its new mobile app which appears to me to be just another way to send the promotional material they now send us through the US Postal Service mail or our computer’s email to our phones as well. As I said, a lot of what Aristocrat is showing off this year is for the casino, not for the player.
The big news for Aristocrat this past year was its acquisition of VGT, Video Gaming Technologies. VGT was founded in 1991 and was acquired October 20, 2014 by Aristocrat for $1.3 billion. VGT is headquartered in Franklin, TN, and its game design studio is in Reno, NV. It has won awards as the #1 provider of Class II gaming machines in the US, and is the #2 lessor of gaming machines to Native American tribes.
Before acquiring VGT, Aristocrat had no Class II presence, so acquiring the company with its market-leading footprint in Oklahoma made a lot of sense. There are opportunities for Aristocrat to take VGT’s mechanical reel expertise and apply that in a Class III market. There is an opportunity for VGT to take some Aristocrat content and place it into the Oklahoma market.
The companies are very complementary, very synergistic. VGT leads in Class II gaming. Aristocrat wasn’t in Class II at all. VGT leads the stepper segment of the market. VGT has had a challenging time developing successful video product. VGT has wanted to do a wide-area progressive (WAP) for some time, but the technology was beyond them. Aristocrat happened to have a WAP which they quickly put together. A win-win for both companies. VGT recently premiered its wide area progressive, Easy Money Jackpot, which includes Mr. Money Bags, Hot Red Ruby, and Lucky Ducky titles. They have big hopes for the progressive market.
Some of the innovations new to the US were tested in Australia earlier. The Lightning Link stand-alone progressive jackpot game was big in the Australian market about three years ago for example. The company has great hopes for that game’s success. One of the keys to the progressive game's success is its ability to effectively merchandize and attract play, according to developers. “You’re taking some of the big pays out of the pay table and you’re displaying them in a progressive jackpot so players can see where the money’s at. These certain jackpots will get high and players will start playing them.”
Like the lottery, I guess, when the jackpot gets high and people who normally don’t buy a ticket, decide to take a chance. Does that increase MY chances of winning? What do you think?
Stay turned. In a few more days, we’ll look at what we can expect from another one of the companies that we count on to entertain us. I wonder which it will be.
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