Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | November 2009 40 WMS square footage that you’re taking up. “Warehouses are littered with games from competitors that have tried to just slap eights on the game where sevens were, and put gold and red where the red white and blue used to be. The maths has absolutely got to be there,” states Mr Gribble. “In some games that have more complexity, such as a ‘picking style’ bonus round, you’ve got to have Chinese on there. You’ve got to have some way of explaining it to the players. Providing options “Our philosophy at WMS is to translate everything into Chinese and then let the operator decide how to configure the machines. You can also have the option of letting the player decide. That’s theway [dual language] most of our machines are set up so the players can select for themselves.” WMS says it has the same flexible approach to general game configuration with its operating partners. “The BLUEBIRD 2 cabinets are all set up for server-based gaming, where you can download games and reconfigure the whole machine— the pay tables, the play field and the buttons. It’s going to create interesting interactions,” he explains. “Almost all the games have the two-level local jackpot. The operator can configure it for himself. That’s another feature of WMS and Orion. We don’t demand that we, the manufacturer, reconfigure the entire machine based on our marketing needs. Operators can do it for themselves. It gives the slot manager a lot more freedom.” Role for Orion Orion is already known as a noted performer in the European market. As Mr Gribble explains, there are unassailable business reasons for having the WMS and Orion brands operating in tandem in the Asia Pacific markets. “WMS and Orion support each other in Asia because Orion has technology that is different and complementary to WMS, and vice versa,” he explains. A good example, he says, is Orion’s Group Wins™, a milestone product introduced at IGE 2009 in London. In the game, players group together and jointly win high prizes. “Group Wins, like MONOPOLY Big Event—is a community gaming device,” states Mr Gribble. “With Group Wins, the operator can purchase the game outright. With MONOPOLY, it’s a branded product from Hasbro, so we have to pay them a licensing fee. So we’re back where we have to do a participation deal to get that. In Asia, participation deals are not allowed in certain jurisdictions like here in Macau. “Here [in Macau] you have to be joint venture partners,” he explains. “Your name has to be on the licence somehow to get a share of the revenue. We have to do a lease hybrid model, where operators buy the base machine, then lease the software and the jackpot system. At the end of the lease they can always go back to a standalone machine. “With the Orion community gaming device, you can buy it outright. It offers that degree of flexibility.” Group Wins™