Inside Asian Gaming

November 2008 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 35 our presence in big properties such as The Venetian, Sands and Four Seasons. A system is a long-term partnership with a customer; it is the foundation of their business and the mission critical that helps them control it. For games, we look at two sets of statistics: one is market share [the percentage of existing machines in the market], the other is ship share [the percentage of new orders going into the market]. Our ship share is around 20% and that’s where we aim to be overall in fiscal year 2009 [July 1 to June 30].We’ve secured 20%of the City of Dreams order. Our market share is less than that, however, at around 9%. Are you happy with Bally’s rate of growth? We’re growing at a nice rate. Last year was a good year and this year we’re looking at achieving similar results. Fingers crossed that no unexpected financial changes get in the way. At the moment it is hard to tell what’s around the corner.When there is uncertainty in the world, like there is now, it’s a matter of managing expenses really Celestial Winds is based on the traditional Chinese tile game of mahjong and was developed specifically for the Macau market. According to Catherine Burns, Vice President and Managing Director, Asia Pacific, of Bally Technologies, “the game plays like a poker pay table.” She adds that Bally’s research and development “is based in the US and India. Our guys in Macau give a lot of feedback to those guys to create market-specific games and products.” carefully and controlling those aspects. Our business is healthy and Bally’s business as a whole is strong. In your experience, how well is the Asian gaming industry weathering the current storm across financial markets? Asia seems to be holding on quite well; there are a few things happening. Key projects are continuing in Macau. City of Dreams will open in the first half of 2009—there is no room for concern there. Las Vegas Sands Corporation continues to say it will open parcels five and six on the Cotai Strip. The outlook for Macau is strong in the long-term. Around Asia, Bally also has business in Singapore, with a system going into Marina Bay Sands and good prospects at Resorts World at Sentosa. The Philippines is moving along. We just received an order from Korea and shipped our first machines to Cambodia. We have a strong partnership with 113 East, which looks after us in Cambodia and Vietnam. These markets give Bally a nice, solid business—we’re not dependent on just one. We’ll survive the financial challenge—barring anything unforeseen that none of us has heard about yet [laughs]. We’re running a very tight, lean, focused business and if nothing else comes out of the woodwork we should be on track for a good year. I usually don’t caveat this much, but we are in uncharted water with this financial crisis. I believe that our business as a whole is solid and I don’t want to play into the negativity. We may have a few bumps, but we’ll work through them and keep focused and that should be enough. What innovations is Bally introducing to the market? On the systems side,we are looking to introduce the Power Series suite of marketing modules, which involve bonuses, player rewards and games—things that are tied to loyalty cards. In the US, Bally has just released something called Display Manager, which takes our iVIEW™ technology and places it on the game screen. iVIEW™ Display Manager runs off our system, not off the game core, so it is not interfering with the game in any way. To the player it is seamless, but it gives the operator another option to communicate on the game screen or through the iVIEW™. We have done some significant development on our table products, which are now bilingual in Chinese and English. The enhancement is focused on the demands of players here. Bally’s TableView™ table-rating and player-tracking system allows pit staff to enter player ratings, request chip fills and credits, and issue customer comps and markers in real time