Pokies and Slot Machine Information

Global gaming conference Sydney 2006 a success

As per a previous blog post, we were lucky enough to attend this years global gaming conference, held in Sydney Australia. The three days of the conference held in early September 2006 just flew by! See the official site here.

In other posts we’ve reviewed the different products on display, all sorted by manufacturer. There were almost 300 exhibitors though, so we’ll cover the major slot makers and reference other exhibitors in limited depth. The overall ratings given to each poker machine maker are very similar - this indicates a high level of quality of presence, not an inability for us to rate them properly!

You can play the pokies that are present - they all come pre-loaded with credits. Thats not what the convention is really about though - its about getting a feel for machines/brands and making deals.

The conference seemed to be primarily designed for male attendees - if the number of attractive ‘promo girls’ is any indication.

The Sydney conference in a nutshell:

City : Sydney Australia.

Venue : Darling Harbour Exhibition Centre.

Exhibitors: around 300. Huge variation in type - from the major slot makers, to ATM sellers, coin machine makers - even venue aroma specialists. The larger exhibitors were also giving out ’show bags’ which usually contained interesting trinkets and gaming machine brochures.

Attendees : many thousands by our count.

Poker machines present : several hundred.

Drinks : delicious and complementary.

Deals made at venue : there were many discussions made between attendees and exhibitors which likely will lead to huge sales.

Overall rating: 4.5 / 5 stars. Organisation was excellent. Design and layout were superb. There were simply no glitches. Everything ran smoothly. Even the queue to obtain entry badges was orderly and processed efficiently.

The addition of extra seating around the bars may be helpful in future years (though the drinks bill might go up a bit!).

Next years conference is at the end of August 2007, and we’re already pre-registered. There is also a larger exhibition held annually in Las Vegas. Thats being held in October 2006 and we’re going to miss it (no invite as yet!), but we have every intention of attending the 2007 Las Vegas conference and you’ll see all the juicy details here afterwards.

Until next year…

(all trademarks are copyright of their respective owners.)

Gaming expo exhibitor - pokies manufacturer IGT

Worlds largest slot machine manufacturer.

Exhibitor in a nutshell:
Display area : large.
Gaming machine selection : very large.
Staff knowledge/approachability : good-excellent.

With a huge range of machines on display, and the new Wheel of Fortune jackpot game finally here, its looking good for IGT. The new range of Blue Chip games are such a large upgrade over previous games, that you really need to play them to understand the difference. Larger, clearer graphics, nice scrolling and interactive touchscreens all make for a greatly enhanced slot machine player experience - and thats really the bottom line.

The only downside to some of the games was the positioning of the note acceptors. When they are mounted low and right on a machine, its easier for the notes to drop to the floor if they are rejected on insertion.

The new “Money Chimes” linked jackpots are based on the blue chip hardware and software. We found it was just fun to play for the progressive jackpots, once again with touch screen interactivity and smooth, pleasing graphics.

What really pleased though was the Wheel of Fortune jackpots - there was a real element of competition with other players on the same bank - even though a jackpot could be summoned at will with the assistance of the friendly IGT staff. The jackpots are multi-level, and graphically exceptional.

Another preview of the future was found in the 10 game product (available for New Zealand). Players can choose any of ten different games on the same physical machine. There are many advantages - one of which being that players are happier if they don’t have to move around.

As with other manufacturers, there were some updates to older games alongside the all new ones. This vendor appears to have more licenced concept content for its slot machines - licenced from television shows. Whether this translates into higher player revenue is unclear.

Overall rating: 4.5 / 5 stars. If you have pokies in your venue, you need the Wheel of Fortune jackpot games.

Wheel of Fortune is a registered trademark of Califon Productions, Inc.

Gaming expo exhibitor - pokies manufacturer Aristocrat

Aristocrat was easily one of the largest vendors displaying its wares at the convention - and right inside one of the two entrances.

Exhibitor in a nutshell:
Display area : large.
Gaming machine selection : very large.
Staff knowledge/approachability : good-excellent.

We found the quality of the Aristocrat display to be every bit as good as that of the poker machines they create. From the wide range of machines to the obviously high number of staff present, there was no problem in having questions answered.

Linked Jackpot machines were set up so that they would be triggered every few spins on the demo machines, and there were some impressive new jackpot designs on display.

Artwork on the new games is fairly standard Aristocrat stuff - nice, clean, uncluttered matching graphics. Interestingly, though the game graphics were fairly basic, the company has gone all out in creating a 3d visual feast in the overhead plasma/LCD displays. Fully rendered 3D ‘movies’ provide immersive depictions of the jackpot storylines, from the Pharaohs sarcophagus in the “Pharaohs Fortune” linked jackpots to the soccer themed display of the “Golden Goals” jackpots.

It was not clear at the exhibition whether the latter jackpots will be available in Australia.

This particular exhibitor catered for several markets - Queensland, New South Wales, New Zealand and Macau amongst others. Different brochures were provided for each region.

New Zealand customers were able to see their new multigame Aristocrat products with full popup displays. The multigame units allow the player to select one of four games to play - simply by activating the touchscreen. This is a precursor to the new download technology, where players or venues will eventually be able to choose to play any game on any machine. The popup displays reveal player win/loss data as is now required by New Zealand legislation.

There were a few new games on display. Most were variations on existing games - new graphical themes with a free games feature borrowed from an earlier release. There is a lot of sense in this, the quality of the features in these games tends to be good.

Its also likely to be much easier to gain regulatory approval if you are just changing the theme rather than the structure of a game.

There were also some remade games - such as Peacock Magic. They provide updated graphics and sounds, but little else is new.

One innovative twist is the introduction of 5×5 reel pokies (5 images wide, 5 images high). These extra horizontal reels seem to be activated when you bet more. Its a new capability, but the images become quite small and the paylines hard to follow.

Aristocrat also demonstrated some ticket in ticket out (TITO) machines. These games accept cash and pay out in the form of barcoded tickets which can in turn be accepted by other machines or cashed in at the players discretion. TITO machines are rare to non-existent in some Australian States, but are extremely common in the US market.

Overall rating: 4.5 / 5 stars. Easy to recommend the pokies games for any venue.

Gaming expo exhibitor - pokies manufacturer Ainsworth

Another large exhibitor. Recently rebranded from A-G-T.

Exhibitor in a nutshell:
Display area : large.
Gaming machine selection : large.
Staff knowledge/approachability : good-excellent.

An impressive effort from this pokies exhibitor. To this day the excellent payout music on their new range of machines reverberates throughout our minds.

The vendor had a large number of machines on display, from the old style Ambassador machines with their sideways mounted 29″ (68cm) CRT screens, to the all new range of Ambassador machines with superb 26″ sideways mounted LCD screens. The only downside to the new screens appears to be that there is a lot more chrome on display around the sides of the screen - a bit visually distracting.

A-G-T machines were one of the pioneers of the dynamic paytable. The display screens are sufficiently high to allow simultaneous display of the game reels and a dynamic paytable. The top of the screen is also usable during the feature free games as a second screen area.

Redesign of the gaming machine cabinet appears to remove a problem with the old design - players could rest drinks adjacent to the buttons, with potentially disastrous consequences.

Games on display varied from fairly old to brand new. The new games have a vastly improved scrolling mechanism, superb music and very nice graphics.

It can be slightly distracting when moving from game to game, as the aspect ratio of the game reels on different machines appears to vary - but the distraction is only momentary.

According to the reps, one of the new games is outperforming a lot of other new games on the market - and its easy to see why.

Overall rating: 4.0 / 5 stars. Would have been higher if the mix of old/new machines was more highly geared to the new ones. Some new titles in the brochures didn’t appear to be on the floor.

Gaming expo exhibitor - pokies manufacturer Konami

An international presence.

Exhibitor in a nutshell:
Display area: medium.
Gaming machine selection: medium.
Staff knowledge/approachability: good-excellent.

Konami had a nice display, encompassing numerous pokies, a jackpot link and a bar area. One unfortunate aspect of their setup was that some of the pokies were set up on a thickly carpeted area. Touching the buttons to play the games for the first time often involved receiving a minor static shock - annoying and unexpected. It was moderately amusing to watch others experience it for the first time though.

This exhibitor was showing off its range of hex slots. Instead of the standard 5 x 3 reel pokies, the layout is 3-4-3-4-3 symbols on reels one to five respectively. This creates all new payout possibilities. The only real difficulty is trying to work out what is paying where at any given time. The volume controls on these units were set to higher levels than were necessary.

In addition to the hex slots, there were remakes of older games, with updated graphics and sound. As is the case with many slot machine distributors now, some units come with two screens as standard - one for normal play and one above it to display additional graphics or paytables/linked jackpot details.

Games by this vendor tend to have innovative features - not just 10 free spins - 10 free spins with a twist. Extra attention to graphical detail during features is also a hallmark of these games.

Games on display were cheerful to look at and fun to play.

Overall rating: 4.0 / 5 stars. 4.5 stars if not for the minor static shocks.

Gaming expo exhibitor - pokies manufacturer Aruze Gaming

A medium sized exhibit with some interesting twists.

Exhibitor in a nutshell:
Display area: medium.
Gaming machine selection: medium.
Staff knowledge/approachability: good-excellent.

The staff at the Aruze display were informative and extra friendly. The themed American Indian girls were most well received as well. The range of games was large and the quality of the gameplay impressive.

There was only one real letdown with the games from this vendor - the odd scrolling used. The reels bounce back quite hard before they stop, which is different enough to most of the other pokies vendors that it really stands out.

This was the only exhibitor we found to have a shortcut combination to trigger a feature. Simply pressing three particular buttons at once would yield a feature on the next spin - every time. An excellent idea hopefully others will follow (IGT had a similar trigger for their linked jackpot - but it required a key).

There were more than just slot machines here - roulette simulations included automated mechanical wheels - no dealer required.

Also present were blackjack simulations, which were pretty standard, but included several different variations of a 3d dealer ‘personality’ - projected onto a large screen facing the players. The graphics were seriously well done and included animated backgrounds of casino activity.

Overall rating; 4.5 / 5 stars. Innovative products. Extra friendly staff. Half a star was for the feature trigger on command.

Gaming expo exhibitor - pokies manufacturer Stargames

A medium sized exhibit from this subsidiary of Shufflemaster.

Exhibitor in a nutshell:
Display area: medium.
Gaming machine selection: medium.
Staff knowledge/approachability: good-excellent.

Stargames range of pokies product was well represented. There were some interesting themes - games with Cuban and Russian themes for example. Graphics were generally in a cartoon style - but were very well drawn.

There was also a giant screen showing a slot machine display - but with many players able to participate in the same game at the same time via terminals facing the screen.

This exhibitor also offers a lot of Asian language products and non slot games. Included were Bacarat and Sic Bo. These two games, with the addition of roulette were all available with dealer simulations. A ‘3D’ virtual dealer is depicted in realistic graphics on a central plasma display and players all play with the same dealer.

Different dealer personalities were available, from an austere looking virtual lady to a cheerful young chap.

In keeping up with other manufacturers, touch screen displays were very widespread.

Overall rating: 4.5 / 5 stars. Some innovative products.

General Gaming Exhibitors Sydney 2006

There were a vast array of general exhibitors at the exhibition. Some of the more popular categories included:

-> ATM providers.
-> Coin counter makers.
-> Vending machine makers.
-> Back end specialists - those companies able to monitor gaming machine activity and provide reporting.
-> Venue designers.
-> Aroma specialists - injecting scents into gaming rooms is a popular antidote for cigarette smoke and research indicates it may also make players more comfortable (and therefore more likely to open their wallets).
-> Pokies venue furniture providers. From chairs to carpet.
-> Sellers of plasma/LCD displays.
-> Restaurant paging services - devices customers carry which alert them when their meal is ready.
-> Signage professionals.

None of the exhibitors were pushy. Most seemed content for patrons to wander into their displays rather than launch marketing attacks as people walked by. The market niches most of the small vendors occupied were sufficiently small that they knew their products and jobs backwards. No messing around - straight to the point.

Notable amongst the general exhibitors were those providing roulette/horse racing/black jack simulations. These were all entirely automated simulations of the real events.

The horse racing for example was displayed on a huge screen in stunning virtual 3d. Player stations were situated facing the screen, with punters able to bet on the various horse winning combinations similarly to how they might at a real track. Once bets were closed (this was automated based on time) the horses would race, complete with a photo finish at the end of each race.

There is no rating for this group, but suffice it to say that the overall quality of displays was excellent.