Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | June 2012 30 INSIGHTS really have needed to improve. So we’ve engaged a China studio in Tsingtao, and their first four games are here. Again, more investment in R&D with the progressives specifically for this market. All our games come in English and Chinese, so it really is an important investment for us in the slot business. You’ve really ramped up your Macau team. Are they feeding a lot of information back to the development teams? Obviously, yes is the answer. But the China team is different from theMacau team, I mean that’s really an R&D center only. But we have people travelling around the area the whole time, product managers, getting data from customers, getting data from the market. Not rumors, but real data, bringing that back into the development equation. Asia is a lot more important to the company now. Yes. Asia, the last quarter, I think was 17% of our total revenues. I’m delighted from a Shuffle Master perspective that over 50% of our revenues come from outside the US. We really are a truly global company. I guess you see that developing a lot more in the coming months and years. What are the big opportunities you see in Asia? Well, this [the Mojo] is probably the biggest investment you can do for Asia. We do so well in Singapore with this product. We hope this kind of product actually comes from Asia out to the rest of the world. We also do very well with this in Australia. This is also in the Australian market. Vegas Star and Rapid do very well down there. Your last product line is interactive, where you provide online versions of your proprietary table games. What are you showing here from the interactive division? Here we’ve got Casino War, Ultimate Texas Hold’em and Three Card Poker. We’ve been bringing our games into the interactive space. They’re being played here as well. And we just bought the Ongame Network [one of the world’s leading online poker networks, acquired by Shuffle Master in March this year]. So everything we’re doing with the exception of the slots is focused on the pit. Globally, do you see the interactive division as offering potentially the greatest growth? You know, I’m a little bit cautious and wary of interactive. It’s a natural progression for us to have our proprietary table content on felt, then on electronic, and then online. We have over 2,400 IP filings. The money in it is there to be made, obviously. If America takes off it’s going to be huge. If Asia ultimately legalizes, it will be even bigger. We operate in over 300 jurisdictions in the world. So we really are a global company. We won’t risk any of our markets, anywhere, for anything. And it’s very important from the online perspective that we’re very cautious. So those games will have social wrappers around them, so you’ll play them on Facebook. But interactive is an exciting division. Again, a big investment in R&D there. Ongame has over 150 developers in Sweden. So we really are transforming the company, staying focused on the pit, and really investing in our R&D. Rapid Baccarat featuring the newMojo cabinet Gavin Isaacs (right) and Shuffle Master Executive Vice President – Asia Ken Jolly with the Chinese-themed Duo Fu Duo Cai