Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | December 2009 20 Aristocrat We are really looking at the company being realigned and structured to where its revenues and business are starting to grow and generate. That’s the US, Australia and New Zealand, Japan, and then Asia Pac sits in the rest of the world with Europe and South Africa. “Going back to your first question about Play to Win, we’re looking at focusing on the right markets and the right segments, and delivering products specific to thosemarkets and segments. That includes putting studios dedicated to those products sometimes physically in the region concerned, but in any case dedicated to those particular markets. “That’s a bit of a change for Aristocrat, where in the past we might have taken from a big pool of products and then assigned them to different markets around the world.” NK: About 20% of what we showed on our stand at G2E this year was product developed locally [in Las Vegas]. That’s our highest proportion ever. “The product we had in our “invited guest only room” at G2E this year is product that’s come out of our Las Vegas-based ‘key concept- innovation’ studio. “We are putting a lot of focus on making sure our talent is in the right places and is close to the markets and understands the market requirements and can respond very quickly to that. “The other key initiative in the US that will probably flow on to Asia in the near future is we are investing in our stepper business; the mechanical reel business. Our G2E stand this year has a significant number of new stepper titles. Previously, Aristocrat was very focused on video gaming. We ignored that other piece of the market. If you look at North America, today 40% of the market is stepper, and you can’t [as a supplier] afford to be out of that. So we are looking at building our studio capabilities in that area over time. This is not something you can do overnight. It takes a bit of time. But we have a stable platform, a great looking box. We’ve invested in that in the last 18 months. Now it’s all about building great games.” DP: “One of the bullet points for your readers in relation to our Play toWin strategy is about creating the best games and the best systems. A big focus there is on making use of customer insight and on developing initiatives led by the customer. We want to draw as much information out of the market as we can. There’s a greater focus on market research. In Macau for example we have test banking and customer-fed interaction. We have meetings with customers [casino operators] and players. That all leads back to making the best products and the best gaming solutions. Play to Win is a great strategy that all links back to delivering the best product to the market.” NK: “A lot of the themed product we are seeing out there [in the market] right now is more what we would describe as ‘entertainment’ based. This type of product does appeal to a certain demographic of player. Themed product is certainly an area we have been more focused on of late and will continue to be.” DP: “Jaws has been very successful. NK: “Jawsisagoodexample of that, highly themed and feature rich. So when I talk about entertainment-style product, I’m talking about product that is fully themed, has a higher number of features and more frequent feature hit rates. We are looking at adding more of that style of product to our overall portfolio. What work are you doing in the systems market? NK: “We have a very large systems business here in North America. We have 265 casinos in the United States that use our systems. That’s 30% of the market.” DP: “There’s a lot of development work that goes into the OASIS system and support.” NK:“OASIS [Aristocrat OASIS 360™ Casino Management System] has always been a strong product. We pride ourselves on the strength of the accounting module. We truly believe the accounting module of our OASIS system is the best in the industry. “We have also done a lot of work on our bonusing and marketing modules of OASIS. We have built a wide range of modules that basically bolt on to our core systems solution, and we are continuing to invest in it. We’re going to put another US$17 million of investment over the next couple of years over and above what we spend every year on R&D on OASIS. One of the key initiatives underway is to fully integrate our downloadable gaming solution into our OASIS platform. We are also working on our next version of our Sentinel player tracking module which will incorporate even more value-adding functionality. In today’s world, this is increasingly important. Operators need to understand who their customers are and understand their customers’ playing habits and trends, and they need to reward their loyalty.” Are you now designing your games to fit around your system? NK: “We actually run our games and systems businesses separately. Systems for us are about offering our customers the capability to understand their players and reward their players more. Our systems can communicate with any SAS games that are out there. We are continually challenging ourselves on what we can do to enhance our system bonusing applications, marketing modules, etc., We have bonusing and marketing applications that we can push out to each machine on the floor. Some of these applications act as a game within a game. For example while the player’s playing, he or she can see something else happening on the Sentinel device and realise that they have been entered into a scratch card draw, or have a chance of winning a lucky prize.” DP: “There is interactivity [between game and system], but I don’t think the two really overlap. Sentinel adds bonusing features to drive a different experience for the players and create something that is unique.”