Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming April 2015 37 Tech Talk is San Xing Bao Xi, or Lucky Dragon as it’s known in English, which features a fire dragon in the base game who reveals random expanded substitutes to increase the number of awards, along with the Fu Lu Shuo multi-progressive. The game, like all of IGT’s new releases, is compliant to Macau’s latest 1.1 electronic gaming machine standards. Other strong new titles, according to IGT Senior VP International Sales Sabby Gill, include Dancing Lion, Shaolin Kung Fu, Tokidoki and Golden Dragon. Tokidoki is an iconic lifestyle brand from Japan, while Golden Dragon is a wheel-type game, similar to IGT’s immensely successful Wheel of Fortune and Megabucks products, that was created in collaboration with Las Vegas Sands Corp. “They have placed 100 units of those. So that’s a big one for us. It’s a theme they came up with, so we gave them a level of exclusivity to be able to place the games before anyone else. It’s a six-month period. As soon as that’s up, we can start placing machines with everybody else,” adds Mr Gill. Golden Dragon is a linked product based on average minimum banks of 12 up to 200. The base game is a 243-way, 400-credit buy in, it has the ante-bet component, the trigger for the wheel is every 120 games, and three scatters left to right will trigger the wheel. As IGT Macau Sales Manager Gavin Jones explains, “Inside the wheel, there are free games, free games with an additional bonus, and unlike other wheel products that IGT and other manufacturers have released historically, these are multipliers of stake, awarding up to 888 times. So they’re very attractive to players as they stake up. “As I bet down, the value is reduced. So no one is left out of it. Because everyone who goes into the wheel and wins one of the metered prizes will win the value as per their stake level. No one’s being rewarded over or under what they contributed to the prize. That’s really important and what’s going to drive the popularity of the product. If I want to be a minimum bet player, that’s fine. I’m going to be rewarded exactly in keeping with my stake. That’s something you don’t see these days, when people are contributing to progressives they haven’t bought.” As for the ever-popular Wheel of Fortune, “we have extended the existing Sony license for another ten years, and we were able to expand the Wheel of Fortune use to also cover Asia from a for-sale perspective,” reveals Mr Gill. “Previously we’ve only ever leased that game, but now we’re able to sell that here. For all of the other jurisdictions it’s going to be available but more on a lease basis.” Inside Asian Gaming spoke further to Sabby Gill about the merger and the combined entity’s upcoming prospects in Asia. IAG : What are your thoughts on the GTECH-IGT merger? The great thing is, the tie up between the two companies— largest global supplier of lottery, largest supplier from the casino manufacturing side—the combined company ends up being a US$6 billion [in revenue] company, and from an EBITDA perspective we’re about $2.2 billion, which means that we’re about twice as big as the next major player. Because we’re a complementary merger, I think everyone’s looking forward to the opportunities, since there isn’t really that much overlap between the two organizations. GTECH is extremely strong in the lottery space, IGT is extremely strong in the casino space. We’re extremely strong in the social gaming space with the Double Down acquisition. We have our interactive, online content, whereas they’ve got a platform which we’ve never Dancing Lion