It's hard to believe that one of the industry's most ubiquitous suppliers began with just a small wooden pinball machine back in 1932. Although much has changed since Bally Technologies Inc.'s birth during the Great Depression era, the current economic outlook has become equally as gloomy.
Laura Olson-Reyes, Bally's director of corporate communications, sat down to chat with Gaming Industry Media about what the Las Vegas-based company has in the cards for G2E, how the company is combating the recent economic downturn and what the latest Bally games and systems have to offer.
What can attendees expect from Bally at G2E?
Attendees this year can expect to see the same extraordinary display of Bally's games, systems and Network Floor of the Future technology in our 11,000 floor exhibit. Our theme this year is "Your Bally, Your Way," which reflects Bally's customer-centric approach to developing products with customers for customers, and even more important this year, products that add value to customers' gaming operations.
A little bit more specifically, this year visitors to our booth will see 50 percent more games then we've showcased in years past. So, we have added a significant number of game titles to our booth. We have such an extraordinary array of games that we want to showcase this year for every market -- class three, class two, central determination lottery, international -- that we decided to actually reconfigure our booth so that we can showcase more games.
Visitors to our booth will also be able to see live demonstrations of our new world class system Bally Business Intelligence product. We are also going to have a command-and-control center, which is going to be slightly elevated from our main show floor that demonstrates our Network Floor of the Future technology, which is our server-based technology.
What do you hope to accomplish?
We really want to showcase Bally's broad portfolio of products for all different markets. We want to showcase how our games, our systems, our Network Floor of the Future technology ties together, and we want to showcase our customer-centric approach to product development.
How does Bally differ from some of the other suppliers out there?
Obviously we offer products for the entire casino floor, from systems to games to network floor technology. We offer games for nearly every market. But I think what really differentiates us is our customer-centric business focus and our commitment to designing products with our customers and for our customers that address their needs and that add value. In today's economy that's more important than ever.
Is your company doing anything differently because of the economic slowdown?
One important take away that visitors at our G2E booth will find is that we are truly offering a broad array of systems, games and products that add value to casino floors. A number of our systems offer important features that provide casinos with more flexibility with cost savings and allow them to manage their floor more efficiently and more effectively -- so those kinds of technologies help.
We are also working with our customers in this challenging economic time: We're offering some customer specials and different financing options; we are being more flexible in our business model; we're offering some products that we typically offer only as a revenue share model as sale games instead.
I would say, in short, that we are being more flexible.
What is the next step in your global strategy?
We continue to expand and grow our business outside the United States into new markets in Europe, South America, Mexico and Asia Pacific. We definitely are enhancing and growing our presence overseas, and we are developing products on the systems and games side specifically for international markets. So, international growth is definitely part of our global strategy.
We are going forward going forward with a very solid, strategic plan in place that our board of directors just recently approved. I touched on earlier that the plan is really focused on the customers. It's focused on working with our customers and getting their feedback to develop games and systems technologies that meet their needs. It's using data to drive our decisions.
Again, at the core is a very customer-centric business-driven philosophy that we feel is going to add value to our customers as well as for all stakeholders of Bally over the next five years.
Tell me something unique Bally has added to the industry.
Well, Bally is 76 years old. So, we are one of the, if not the, oldest slot manufacturer in the industry. We introduced the first slot machine featuring a bottomless hopper and the first fully electronic reel-spinning slot; we also introduced the world’s first electronic slot management system, SDS.
What's the latest from Bally?
We are going to have so many exciting products on the show floor (at G2E). I will go ahead and pick out a few that are kind of standouts.
We are going to be showing one of the industry's first Multi-Game stepper products. We call it our GameMaker multi-platform. So, we think that's going to be very exciting.
We are going to have a number of new cabinet designs. We are going to be showing three different oversized or jumbo cabinet styles that measure in height from eight to twelve feet tall. And, again, those are available in three different configurations of video configuration, a stepper configuration and a stepper with an instant spin prize top box feature. And that particular unit I just mentioned was the one that's actually 12 feet tall.
We're also going to be displaying a new platform we call DualVision. It's a multi-player gaming platform. It has one single segmented video display, it has a bench seat for two people, and it has a common bill acceptor. So, it's really a game and a product designed for couples or for friends who want to come to the casino and enjoy the gaming experience together. It's really a unique product with that duel bench seat.
We're also displaying a new fine line cabinet, which has a slimmer profile and a reduced depth. It's a smaller cabinet for smaller casino floors, which we think has a lot of potential in international jurisdictions.
And why is that?
Across the world there are a number of casinos and gaming operations that just don't have the space that some of the larger casinos in the United States do. So, this is a cabinet that we think obviously has a lot of potential domestically as well as internationally. And especially in smaller casinos, even smaller areas of larger casinos where they just don't have the footprint.
You may know that Bally is the company that brought the industry Playboy slots. This year we're actually introducing a new Playboy games on our 32-inch vertical video touch screen display. And this will be the first Playboy game we have ever offered as a sale game. We typically offer those to game operators under a participation or a recurring revenue structure, but this one we are actually offering for sale. We're excited about that.
We have another really exciting product: a progressive video slot called Power Strike. What is interesting and what makes this game unique is that casinos can configure the top jackpot award to be a high-value item instead of a monetary amount. With Power Strike the casino can configure it to be a car, a motorcycle, a vacation, a RV, and they can actually configure that into the game mass itself. So, when the player wins the top jackpot award, they are winning that high-value item. We think that game is going to have a lot of potential because casinos can display the top jackpot award -- whether its a car, a motorcycle or a boat -- right on top of the bank of games, so players can actually see what their top prize would be if they won that top jackpot award.