WMS says careful preparation and market knowledge is helping the company gain traction in Asia
Stuart Gribble is probably very good at the famous board game Monopoly, where players aspire to build up a critical mass of property assets and bump their competitors out the market. That’s because when it comes to sales of his WMS slot products, he believes in careful planning followed by decisive action at just the right moment.
The imagery is very appropriate, given that WMS is the maker of the hugely successful slot game series MONOPOLY Big Event, which was named Best New Slot Game in the Inside Asian Gaming – Supplier Awards 2009 in January.
WMS doesn’t claim to have been first out of the gate in pursuing slot sales in Macau, but the company does believe it has made up for that by working really hard to understand the market.
Clear target
“We’ve been extremely focused on the Macau market in the last year and the results are coming through,” says Mr Gribble, WMS’ Sales Manager South-East Asia.
“We’re growing our market share, and not necessarily through market shrinkage, but through sales. Every time I come in contact with a competitor I’m hearing congratulations. Perhaps we were a little slow to start, but we are consolidating now.
“My sales are perpetuated by the work that we do beforehand. The evidence is clear, because I’m receiving orders in Macau, and I don’t know of anybody else in this position,” he adds.
“Aristocrat is still dominant in the Macau market, but I’d like to think WMS is somewhere around second. I’m not talking about machines on the floor, but in terms of performance,” Mr Gribble states.
When asked about the origin of his meticulous approach, he smiles. “It’s probably my manufacturing background,” he explains.
G2E Asia
The next big WMS product launch for Asia, at G2E Asia 2009 in June, will be the BLUEBIRD®2 cabinet. It’s described by the company as a slimmer, sleeker version of the original BLUEBIRD concept, with dual LCD displays in both video and mechanical reel versions. The BLUEBIRD2 supports all of the peripheral devices of its larger sibling, but sheds the traditional glass in favour of a second high definition LCD panel. Importantly, the cabinet is supplied ready for server-based gaming.
If Melco Crown Entertainment’s new Cotai resort City of Dreams opens in the first half of 2009 as planned, then it is likely to be the first venue in the region to carry BLUEBIRD2—at around the same time as the regional launch of the product at G2E Asia.
Simply fun
One of the striking things when looking at the chunky electro-mechanical reels of the MONOPOLY Grand Hotel Big Event game on a BLUEBIRD2 displayed at the International Gaming Expo in London recently, is how beautifully clear and simple the game is. This may well be a selling point in a market such as Macau, where a common observation heard particularly from market research surveys of mainland Chinese visitors is that multi-line games are hard for newcomers to understand at first.
“My three-reel machines in Macau are certainly very successful,” says Mr Gribble.
“Apart from the button legends, it’s American-style, with the number 7s and bars. They’re very easy to understand.
“At G2E Asia, the BLUEBIRD2 cabinet will be used to demonstrate our network gaming offer. We’ll have a selection of all the different categories of product we offer on that cabinet,” explains Mr Gribble.
Local appetite
He adds machine replacement cycles are typically shorter in venues catering for local players compared to those hosting outsiders.
“If you’re a casino aimed at the local market, you’re going to have to keep the floor fresh,” he explains. “But if you’re focused on a more transient market, you can hold on to the product a little longer.
We are in Mocha [Clubs in Macau], for example, and working hard to build our performance there. “They have a very strong locals crowd. They are constantly busy working the floors and we’re there to help them,” states Mr Gribble.
Insight
“Part of what I’ve been doing in the past year is building my understanding of the player market in order to provide the product configured correctly to meet their expectations. And I know we are having an impact at several of the sites. We are working now on product concepts and variations. We are even looking at the Orion product for them.”
So far, the only place in Macau where players have the chance to see Orion games is in the WMS showroom and in an occasional test bank of machines in a casino.
“We’ve just completed our configurations and specifications for Orion products right for the market. I’m a little careful about that stuff. You want it to work. You’ve got to give it the best possible chance,” states Mr Gribble.
“We have a common platform with Orion and share an OS [operating system] to a certain level—although not completely. You can’t just swap a WMS game into an Orion cabinet,” he explains.
Branding
“Orion products have a differentiation from WMS games. The Orion designers explore and focus on different areas of game theme and design than the WMS designers. We’re quite careful to make sure they don’t clash,” he says.
Mr Gribble is also hopeful about picking up WMS sales in the Singapore casino market when it goes live late this year.
“We have some exposure to the Singapore market through cruise ships, and of course we have sales at Genting [Highlands in Malaysia],” states Mr Gribble. WMS will be represented by RGB for sales at Resorts World at Sentosa, while Mr Gribble will deal directly with LVS at Marina Bay Sands.
“We certainly expect there’ll be demand for our product in Singapore, and we’re very positive in general about our prospects for the rest of 2009,” he adds.
