Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming April 2015 38 Tech Talk had before, so you can sort of marry those two together as well. And that’s really the benefit of being two companies with very little overlap compared to what the competition—which are undergoing more of a pure acquisition—are going to be going through. It also broadens our geographical reach. You look at places like Peru, South America. GTECH has a direct presence there; we don’t, but there’s a huge demand for our product there. So being able to leverage each other’s strengths is really the rationale behind the acquisition. In August, IGT announced a tie-up with LT Game in Macau. What does that bring? When IGT was selling into the local market, we had some great relationships that came from our corporate clients like Wynn, Las Vegas Sands, MGM and everybody else. But we were never really able to penetrate what I would say is the second–tier level of operators. Somebody like LT, who has long-standing relationships across all of the different operators, really what they’ve been able to do is give us more sales coverage than we’ve ever had before. Now we’re really leveraging their relationships in the tier-two satellite casinos. But they’ve still got great relationships with the major accounts as well. Reciprocal to what they’re doing for us inMacau is what we’re able to do for them in North America. Looking at different jurisdictions, helping them with the regulatory approvals and all of those different markets because we’ve been through it so many times with all of our games and new releases of product, etc. So we’re able to help and they’re able to leverage that. From what we’ve seen there’s a lot of interest in North America for their products. What are the key markets for you in Asia beyond Macau? The other key markets for us are the Philippines, things like City of Dreams Manila. We have quite a big footprint in there at their opening, including providing their system. We also have placements at Resorts World Manila and Solaire. Another key market for us is Korea. We signed the relationship In Asia in particular, IGT has made major strides over the past three years with its “market-attuned” game- development strategy, which means a lot of things, but can be distilled down to the recognition that an appealing package, while important, doesn’t cut it if the game mechanics, the math and the cultural context aren’t all sound. It means garnering the ability to understand local tastes and preferences in some profound ways.