Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | December 2010 16 IGT S lotmachineoccupancyalreadyappears to be consistently high at ResortsWorld Sentosa in Singapore and is ramping up in Macau. As that trend develops, Asian operators may want to tweak their slot price points in line with player demand. That already happens in the live table segment where minimum bet levels are increased at peak times. At the IGT Asia Network Systems Users Conference held recently at The Venetian Macao, IGT’s Eric Lancaster explained how the company’s sbX®Floor Manager can give operators the kind of flexibility on content and pricing that can improve slot yields. The powerful tools provided by sbX Floor Manager include remote real-time or scheduled game theme adjustment and pricing management. IGT’s sbX Floor Manager made big news when it went live in ARIA at CityCenter in Las Vegas in December 2009 as part of MGM’s server-based gaming floor, and is eagerly anticipated at the Cosmopolitan property opening on the Las Vegas strip this month. But the architecture of sbX is flexible enough to be compatible with existing equipment in older casinos—provided that the equipment has been written to the Gaming Standards Association’s (GSA) open communication standards. “You get the core layer of sbX, that’s the G2S open protocol, and then you got our product called Floor Manager,” explains Eric Lancaster. Open standards “The GSA protocol is something that IGT has embraced because we believe that the [slot] service window, with Media management via sbX, is the way that the industry is going. This allows operators to touch players while on the casino floor. GSA protocol is needed to drive this technology,” says John Gomes, Managing Director of IGT Asia. “Previously if you wanted to get your hands on SAS [Slot Accounting System] protocol technology you had to go to IGT. Now, if you want the GSA protocol, it’s available on the Net, it’s available to everyone that is interested, on a common protocol,” adds Mr Gomes. “Think of sbX Floor Manager as enabling two new things,” Eric Lancaster, Manager, Product Management for IGT, based in Las Vegas, told conference attendees. “It enables the management of games from a desk rather then from the game itself, and it speeds the delivery of the game themes to market. On a slot floor that’s not really possible with the older protocols and the older games. It’s so labour intensive to go out and manage those games and change the price point or change the game themes that are available to your players. The big thing that sbX Floor Manager does is to maximise your investment in your game partners. You as an operator have a certain amount of space, and for you that’s retail space selling a product. You need to maximise your return on the investment in that space,” states Mr Lancaster. “An interesting thing about Floor Manager is it’s independent of the casino management system. It’s a wire that goes to the game and allows you to manage the game library but it does not interject itself between the game and, say, accounting,” he adds. Real time and scheduled Floor management can be done in real time as conditions on the floor change at short notice, and it can also be done on a scheduled basis in anticipation of peaks and troughs of activity. “It allows you to manage based on time of day, it allows you to manage on day of the week, or week of the month, or month of the year,” explains Eric Lancaster. “sbX Floor Manager allows you to manage pricing targets. It allows you to manage your game mix to optimise for a particular demographic or particular event. You can tailor to your expected player and you can also compete better when using sbX Floor Manager.” IGT says it typically takes a slot manufacturer some time to deliver a casino’s order for a new slot game or a conversion kit for an existing cabinet. “Imagine if our new games just came to you, every month,” says Mr Lancaster. “Here they are. And you can put them on any compatible cabinet you want. Now you don’t have to choose. They’re delivered to you automatically every month. Using sbX Floor Manager, a key benefit is the game Edge Wise IGT’s sbX® Floor Manager offers flexible tools to boost slot revenues and give an edge over rival operators