Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | September 2010 52 Can you tell us a bit about your overall global corporate strategy? WMS has always focused on developing distinctive gaming experiences for players and operators for all the markets in which we operate, including Asia. “Today, international quarterly unit shipments typically account for close to 40% of our total unit shipments, and we are continually working to increase our market penetration across the globe.” Talking Heads Gaining Ground Sebastian Salat, President, WMS International, shares his thoughts on the Asian market W ith its innovative products and flexible approach to players and operators, WMS has consistently increased its global market share in recent years. Most recently, in North America in the June 2010 quarter, the company has overtaken IGT to become the market leader by ship share. In Macau, the slot market is an immature one, and players’ preferences are rapidly evolving away from hard-core gambling to more leisure-style play—with a clear segment of regular leisure slot players having emerged. One of the obvious potential beneficiaries of this development is WMS, whose games are acknowledged to offer superior entertainment value. Although Chinese players have a strong aversion to straying from tried and trusted games (which has helped Aristocrat’s initial dominance in the market to endure), familiarity with WMS’s products is steadily growing and the company appears poised to make further inroads into Asia. Inside Asian Gaming talked to Sebastian Salat, President, WMS International— featured in this issue’s Asian Gaming 50 – 2010 —about his company’s plans for Asia and beyond. IAG : It seems there’s no stopping WMS in theUS, but the company still has a longway to go in improving its share of the Asian market. What is your strategy for Asia? Do you have any Asia-specific initiatives planned for the next 12months? WMS is making steady progress with our push into the Asian gaming market. While we are pleased with the amount of success we have had to date in a relatively short period of time, our goal is to continue our momentum and gain additional market share. Our products have gained growing acceptance among Asian slot players and we continue to focus on producing content and play features that meet the entertainment demands of players in the market. Complementing our game development efforts, which includes expanding our R&D effortstowardsproductsfortheAsianmarket, is an increase in our support infrastructure in the region including additional local sales, marketing and technical support personnel. How about anything specific in terms of game design for themarket? Through our Player Driven Innovation™ development initiatives, we have found that players, regardless of region, respond similarly to innovative play features and content that provides them with the best entertainment experience. With this understanding of what players want, our game developers focus on applying a suite of our core technologies across our game portfolio to enable these games to be flexible enough towork inmany countries, support multiple languages and offer localised symbols and game features. We continue to cultivate our understanding of the preferences of the Asian slot player. Over time, we have found that Asian players tend to prefer more highly volatile games and, to that end, we have adapted a portion of our game portfolio. Sebastian Salat