“I expect to see a wider choice in how patrons can interact and do business with our gaming products"

What are your expectations and objectives for G2E Las Vegas?
At G2E Las Vegas, we hope to meet with our existing customers so we can hear from them how their gaming business is performing with a view to understanding if we can, in some small way, help them to grow their revenues and reduce their costs. That is what our products deliver for our customers; revenue growth and cost reduction. As these two points are so critical to our industry during the current straitened times, we also hope to build upon our existing, high quality, customer base by adding new customers to our client list.

Will you launch new products? Which are their main characteristics?
Gaming Support will be demonstrating new features and upgrades to several product lines. The gaming industry’s leading digital signage solution, JackpotJunction, has been made even better with our Multi Protocol Converter interface for Ethernet floors, our CMS Gateway software that monitors and feeds floor-wide jackpot data to JackpotJunction and our Wayfinder application that allows customers to search for their favorite machine on a user friendly touch-screen kiosk.

Our feature-rich, scalable and cost-effective progressive jackpot controller, BaseSys Navigator supports mystery jackpots as well as standard single and multilevel progressives. Used in conjunction with our BaseSys Interface Board, this combined solution allows BaseSys Navigator to be connected to most all popular electronic gaming machine (EGM) types.

We will be showing our SlotTimer again as a solution to reduce the power consumption of slot machines when not in use. The SlotTimer is an EGM peripheral designed to save operators money while also being environmentally friendly; a nicely balanced Win-Win product to meet the needs both of today and tomorrow.

In your opinion, what will be this edition’s main challenge?
I would consider the legalization and ongoing development of new channels to market, mainly using mobile devices and online gaming, as being the most important opportunities that face our industry worldwide.

Our industry continues to face an uncertain future in certain traditional markets, including for example Atlantic City and northern Nevada. These are microcosms of what most geographic markets are facing in the global gaming industry today; pressure on top-line revenues and bottom-line profits due to pressure on consumers’ disposable incomes. The macro-economic issues driving this pressure on consumers’ disposable incomes face not only our industry, but pretty much every industry, especially in North America and Europe where gaming is a more mature market. So to try and break out of what appears to be an inexorably downward spiral, and one that is on the cusp given the uncertain benefits that our economies will derive from QE2 (Quantitative Easing 2), I think our industry should be looking at widening its customer base in any and all reasonable ways – and to me, mobile and online are the lowest of the hanging fruits to achieve this.

Which trends do you expect to see this year at the show?
Flowing from the comments made above, I expect to see a wider choice in how patrons can interact and do business with our gaming products, be it slots, live tables, electronic tables, the ‘holistic brand experience’ that can and should be what a visit to a casino is all about, and so on. Casinos’ horizons need to expand to encompass a wider world, and, in so doing, take advantage of new channels to market that are proven winners in other industries.

Do you plan to assist to any of the conferences? If so, which one and why?
Not to my knowledge, no. I will not be attending or presenting at any of the conferences. I of course hope and trust that all of them will deliver value and knowledge to attendees. Additionally I hope that the AGEM Appreciation Celebration party at the Hard Rock is as good this year as it was at last year’s G2E.