Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | April 2010 you put it on a gaming floor, you can see the machine from across the other side of the casino. So it’s an attractor of people to the game first, and then once they start playing the game, if they’re getting a good run on pays and features they feel comfortable with it, then they’re sticking with it—hence we’re getting results. I feel using the bigger top box is definitely getting the initial capture of the player.” How are the games performing in Macau? “They are doing extremely well based on the first month’s numbers. We are very excited about the player acceptance on these games. They’re high feature frequency with very rich graphics, and are proving very strong in the low denominations— 22 Last Emperor™ on the G-ENEX™ ‘mega top box T he Australian gaming executive Ken Jolly has more than 30 years of experience in the business—16 of them in international markets. He started an exciting new chapter in his career when he took up a new role with Aruze Gaming America shortly after G2E 2009 in November. Previously, Mr Jolly played a key role in establishing Aristocrat Technologies as the biggest supplier in the Macau and Asian slots markets. He was Aristocrat’s General Manager Asia Pacific from 2003 to July 2009. Now, as Executive Vice President & General Manager for Aruze, Mr Jolly’s beat covers half the world—Asia, Australia, South Africa & Europe. Inside Asian Gaming asked him what his vision is for Aruze in Asia. Inside Asian Gaming : You cover a huge area. What’s your role? Ken Jolly: “My role is very much between the countries and head office. It’s about helping the company to globalise and expand sales organisation and volumes. It’s about focus on sales growth. That’s happening already.” What are your plans for Asia? “We have already got what we call our G-ENEX™‘mega topbox’games out inMacau. Such games as Rock You Queen, Vampire Beauty, San Guo Zhi, Story of Cinderella and BowWow Bucks . “I think what Mr Okada [Kazuo Okada, Aruze’s founder] has done with the R&D and putting the wider top box on some of these highly feature-rich games means that when The ‘Down Under’ Achiever Ken Jolly on his latest role in the Asian gaming market Ken Jolly particularly the 10 cents. “We have some now in The Venetian [Macao], The Plaza [Four Seasons], Sands [Macao] and City of Dreams. There’s interest all over town for the games.” In Macau, there are a relatively small number of high performing slot and multiplayer games and then a longish ‘tail’ of other games. What are the main points you need to make to operators to persuade them to give a new product a trial? “Aruze is a company currently with a modest market share in Macau. But if you can get the interest of the director of slots or the person in charge of the slots, and get the product on the floor, at the end of the day it’s all about what the players want. If the performance is there, the customer will take up the product. Secondly, because Macau is such a compact market, the word gets around as to what’s working. It seems that a lot of the directors of slots are speaking to each other. Then when you look at companies that have additional casino properties in other markets, the word spreads that way as well. “Not only are we getting the results of these games here [in Macau], but we’re also getting the results in Australia and America. We’re also getting contact from Europe with people saying ‘We hear good stories about your new product and that the games are going really well’. It seems there’s a real buzz in the market—starting in about the middle of last year—about some of the new products that are coming Talking Heads