Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | April 2009 42 IGT Inside Asian Gaming – Supplier Awards 2009 announced shortly before the International Gaming Expo in London earlier this year. American launch “We recently released the REELdepth cabinet in the U.S. and the early figures are extremely encouraging,” says Mr Quartier. “The product will be at G2E Asia and might even be released and in the field [in Macau] before then. “We know that Asian players in particular like reel games. It doesn’t take players long to understand them and they feel they can trust them, though obviously as the industry ups reel games to 20 or even 50 lines they become more complex,” he adds. When the display on an IGT REELdepth- configured unit is set to a reel game, the flat glass screen comes uncannily alive. The player would almost swear there were real metallic wheels spinning inside the cabinet. This remarkable optical and auditory illusion even stretches as far as recreating the characteristic ‘bounce’ of a suddenly stopped reel that dedicated slot players of a certain age will associate with the old semi- mechanicals. “If you compare that to some of our competitors, several have made machines that can do something a little similar—with one major difference. What in effect they’ve done is similar to cutting holes into an LCD so that you can see the [mechanical] reel. But once you do that, you reduce the potential of the unit,” explains Mr Quartier. “We, by contrast, can turn a three-reel game into a four-reel into a five-reel game. We can change it into a full video display as well,” he adds. Value bet The fact the REELdepth cabinet can double as a display platform for orthodox video slot games dramatically increases the range of content that can be offered to players via one unit. Users of REELdepth units already have the option of selecting from a range of game content options preloaded onto the machines. Once the units are linked to receive downloads from a remote server, the player options will be even greater. When REELdepth’s display flexibility is teamed up with server-based downloading and management functions, it will boost further the value proposition of the cabinet. Operators will have the ability to change the game mix to suit certain visitor demographics or to maximise appeal to players at certain times of day. This is especially important inmaking every penny work for the business during challenging economic times. The optical wizardry of the REELdepth cabinet is extended to a 3-D service screen displayed below the reels, which can be set up to advertise a range of price denominations. “We think the business proposition of the REELdepth cabinet is already extremely strong and has got even stronger in tough economic times,” says Mr Quartier. “People will always be looking for machines that are flexible, innovative and perform well across a range of functions. The Macau market may have slowed down a little, but the rest of the Asian markets have not. There are good opportunities here in the region,” he states. Kurt Quartier