Inside Asian Gaming

Talking Heads and operational tools and possibilities that this industry deserves. It is hard to contain our excitement when we think of the rate of innovation that is possible now—but we remain humble with our feet firmly on the ground. Our vision and innovation are driven by our customers. While there is a lot of new innovation already in place—there is a lot more coming up soon. What are some examples? There are a number of innovative new solutions coming up. Truly integrated CoolSign-enabled media management, including the ability to provide customized marketing-related communication to patrons even in their hotel rooms; Business Intelligence tools that will provide sophisticated predictive analytics and provide the kind of configurable rules- driven decision-making capabilities that will help casinos realize the true benefits of server-based gaming; the Elite Bonusing Suite that not only comes with a number of player and machine-centric bonusing products but also makes it very easy for both us and our customers to create new bonusing solutions; Biometric Recognition that will enable effective marketing to non- carded players as well; effective true server- based gaming through the Bally Command Center; automated bet and card recognition on tables… there is truly a lot to list here. But, let me focus on the one product that is fast becoming the game window picture- in-picture technology standard—iVIEW Display Manager (DM). One of our new customers, who recently made the decision to replace a competitor system with SDS/CMP, should be live by the time this interview is printed with iVIEW DM on 80% of the floor—across games from virtually all manufacturers. And there are a number of other implementations coming up with iVIEW DM across all games where a touch screen is available on one of the two game screens. There are a number of other attractive bonusing and other marketing applications being released during the next couple of months that will add tremendous value to this product. Enabling a game window is one thing. Making it truly count with applications that create excitement on the floor is where the true value lies. One of the most important applications being released in the July/August timeframe is the DM Cash Spin Wheel. The Cash Spin slot machine, which won the best slot machine award in last year’s G2E, has been rolling out by the hundreds across many casino floors during the past couple of months, and has been a resounding success, generating performance multiple times house-average virtually everywhere. The DMCash SpinWheel provides casinos the ability to use the same U-Spin concept across practically all games on the floor for exciting new bonusing and other marketing purposes. We expect the Elite Bonusing Suite to continue feeding many such ideas that can be used on iVIEW and iVIEW DM that will make a casino floor a lot more exciting for the players. Describe how the DM Wheel works. Our iVIEW DM Cash Spin Wheel application puts one of the most popular game mechanics in history on the main game screen using picture- in-picture or the traditional iVIEW display to give customers a marketing reinvestment at the point-of-play. The player is awarded a certain prize, and the prizes available on each wedge of that wheel could vary among various levels of patron. The image of the wheel can be shown in both 2D and 3D, and the customer actually The iVIEW Display Manager Cash Spin™ controls the speed of the spin based on how they interact with the screen. Like it is with all applications we are building now, this application is also entirely configurable and can be adapted to exactly how our customers want to use it, without needing underlying software changes. These sorts of applications mark a change for Systems, don’t they? I think Systems is and should be both about Core and Cool applications. Innovations and massive improvements must constantly happen in both kinds of applications. Just good core products, without innovative server-based, marketing and bonusing applications, would be no fun. And just innovative cool applications not built on a solid foundation of scalable, reliable, open, and configurable core products will not work with the kind of robustness and repeatability that will be absolutely required in the field. Ramesh Srinivasan has served as executive vice president of Bally Technologies’ Bally Systems division since March 2005. He is responsible for its worldwide Systems business including sales, product management, product development, services, and customer support. Prior to joining Bally, Mr Srinivasan served as executive vice president, Warehouse Management Systems, for Manhattan Associates, Inc. During his seven-year tenure there, Srinivasan was one of the key players that helped Manhattan grow from a US$40 million revenue per annum company to a US$250 million plus supply chain execution technology giant. Mr Srinivasan received his bachelor’s degree in Metallurgical Engineering from the Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University,Varanasi, India, and his MBA in Finance, Marketing and Systems from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India. By Marian Green. Reprinted with permission from Casino Journal. October 2010 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 35