Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | July 2008 50 T ransact Technologies Inc’s Epic 950® made its latest major property-wide debut at the MGM Grand at Foxwoods, which held its celebrity-studded opening at midnight on Saturday, May 17. All of the casino’s 1,500 slotmachines are standardised on the Epic 950.The main Foxwoods Resorts Casino—which has over 7,000 slots, making it the biggest slot venue in the world—is also standardised on Transact printers. Dennis Cavanaugh, Director of Gaming Operations at MGM Foxwoods, commented on the printer decision: TransAct’s Epic 950® was a clear choice for us. Its innovative technology and proven performance deliver benefits to both our players and our staff.” In Macau, the Epic 950 is used exclusively at Wynn Macau—the first local property to have an all-TITO slot floor and the city’s top performing slot venue in terms of average win per machine. Other Macau exclusives for the Epic 950 include Crown Macau, Galaxy Starworld, Mocha Clubs, Flamingo Babylon, and Paradise Casino. Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing Tracey Chernay says that in order to persuade casinos to switch to Transact printers, usually all that’s needed is to give them a taste of the benefits:“We get them to install a trial bank of games with our printer, so they can test our printer and have their slot operations people become familiar with our printer, and see the advantages and ease of use of it. We’ve been very successful in going in, getting the 950 installed in a trial bank, and then gaining their business by earning the respect of their slot technicians and technical staff about what that product can bring to them.” According to Ms Chernay, the benefits reported by casinos include:“High reliability, ease of integration, the ability to be able to easily swap out the printer from one device to the other—so, no matter what platform it was, to be able to pull the printer out and be able to plug another Epic 950 in.” Interoperability also makes it easier to “keep an inventory of spare printers for the games. The ability to easily swap out Epic 950 printers is a result of “the innovative design of the product, where we keep the interface board inside of the actual game device, and it’s a unique racking system that we’ve created, where we can pull the printer out, leave the interface board in the game device itself, and just replace only the printer,” explains Ms Chernay. The product’s design also offers“the ability to easily pull the printer out to put in tickets and replace the tickets, versus having to unhook something.” Furthermore, the Epic 950 is “hot swappable”, meaning machines do not need to be switched off in order to have a new printer fitted. In addition, various paper tray capacities are available to suit different levels of usage, from low intensity play to the most intensive use. As for ensuring the utmost reliability, Ms Chernay stresses “one of the advantages we have is we do a tremendous amount of testing in our lab when we bring out a new printer. Whether it is the Epic 950 or the Ithaca® 8000, we test with a variety of stocks in our reliability lab before we even bring the printer out, so we have certified stocks that we know are going to be reliable with the printer. In the end it’s about the reliability of the solution—the printer and the paper together.” Not only have casino properties “responded very strongly to the 950 and standardised on it,” but in April this year, the world’s leading producer of slot machines, IGT, also named the Epic 950 the default printer for all its new slot machines and video platforms. Transact Chairman and CEO Bart C. Shuldman commented: “This is a historic Epic Attraction Transact SVP Sales and Marketing Tracey Chernay explains what makes the Epic 950® the world’s leading thermal printer for ticket-in ticket-out (TITO) slot machines Vendor Profile Andrew Hanley and Tracey Chernay