Inside Asian Gaming

INSIGHTS “They built a new game, the Equinox, and all of a sudden they have gone from being down near the bottom of the pack to one of the leaders in the industry in Australia. Launching that product up here in Asia, initially, is the first expansion outside of Australia.” around the world where you have these things where we actually do very well. You’ve talked about the slow pace of innovation in the gaming industry compared to, say, mobile phones. Is that something you see changing? Certain parts of it yes, certain parts of it no. You’ve got the fact that—and let me talk a little bit about the slot machine, for example, or let me talk about a Table Master or any piece of technology. A casino invests in it, they buy it. Seven years, eight years, nine years, ten years later, they expect you to keep that running and have it fresh with new games. It’s like buying a computer or a PlayStation 3 today, or whatever it is, and in ten years’ time when PlayStation 5 is out, expecting you to keep your PlayStation 3 up and running. So that really holds back gaming a lot. Does that mean when you engineer a gaming product, it has to be timeless in a way? Absolutely. In many respects, part of the cost factor in gaming equipment is exactly that. You’ve got to make sure the chips you buy are going to be around for at least the next five years. You made it out to Macau fairly regularly as part of your old job. I guess you’ll continue coming out here pretty often as part of the new job? Probably more so in this job. I mean, Australasia is a very large July 2011 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 25