For casino business server-based gambling still in the cards

High-tech slots must get a big shot in the arm together with the opening of Nevada' City-center later this season. Still, a whole lot of rewiring remains to be done.nby Daniel Terdiman February 3, 2009 12:01 PM PST nFollow @GreeterDan nIn the summertime of 2005, the casino business was abuzz with excitement over what was then seen as another great thing--server-based gaming, a major technological change in how slots work. nEssentially, this development would be able for the machines to provide a broad number of games, all opted for at that moment by players, and offered up from back-office databases. This was a sea-change from the old-fashioned style, where a system had a single game constructed into it. As a result, I wrote then, the technology was 'slated to be the greatest news at (the September 2005) World wide Gaming Expo (G2E) in Las Vegas, the casino industry's large annual trade show.' nFlash forward, nevertheless, to the November 2008 edition of G2E, the place where a engineering panel entitled 'Server-based gaming: Beginning to start' stated a rousing discussion on the topic, and the one that belied the extreme optimism of four years ago. 'While it may still be unclear when and how server-based gaming will be introduced widely throughout the business and to the consumer,' the panel's explanation said, 'the question of if it will is no longer. If you cherished this article in addition to you wish to receive guidance regarding gratis casino spel i implore you to check out our own website. ' nnLong seen as the next great thing in the casino business, server-based gambling might eventually get ready for primetime. These machines, from WMS Gaming, are permitted with the technology, allowing individual machines on a casino floor to get new activities on the fly, as well as give the casino a method to present participants promotions.n( Credit: WMS Gaming) nSo yes, the sector was jumping the gun with its 2005 excitement. And of course, given that track record, any new enthusiasm should be viewed through a somewhat suspicious lens. nBut today, business executives say, the time is finally right for sever-based gaming, and the first signs of the technology--albeit a brand new kind of it that's been re-worked significantly from what it was originally--may actually be coming. The following great thing may at long last be here. nThat suggests a number of new slot machine-based innovations could possibly be on the way. Included in this, explained Rob Bone, the vice-president of marketing for WMS Gaming, one of the casino industry's big-four manufacturers, is a community-gaming system that will allow multiple people to play games across a series of models. And yet another, generally known as 'adaptive gaming,' is likely to make it easy for the machines to keep track of a player's improvement and let them rejoin their game, even in a different location. nFor each one of the four producers, then, as part of a more substantial server-based gaming movement the inventions that will come are wide-ranging and diverse. At its core to-day, though, the technology is about systems in which the machines can talk to databases on back-room servers, making it possible to obtain new data and information to a machine at anytime, if not to alter the denomination of games on the fly to reply to casino job numbers. nThe world's first all-server-based gaming floornAnd if a new technology must be openly rolled out with a splash, the casino industry could hardly have plumped for a much better method to formally introduce server-based gaming to the world: City-center, a broad, $8 billion, combined MGM Mirage/Dubai World development project now under construction to the Las Vegas Strip that features thousands of rooms in hotels, luxury condominiums and soccer fields' worth of casino space. And the world's first all-server-based gaming floor. nThis introduction, which will include 2000 devices, is planned for late 2009, and could, in the end these years, eventually pave the way for server-based gaming to become the new industry standard. nBut what caused the delay? nAccording to business professionals, not long after the 2005 G2E, there clearly was a major philosophical change, when the major vendors--International Game Technology (IGT), WMS, Bally Technologies, and Aristocrat--came to the conclusion, alongside specialists, that instead of each looking to make their own proprietary types of the technology, they'd place their heads together and devise some new technology standards. n'In 2005, there were no criteria, and no protocols through which we could develop help software,' said Javier Saenz, the vice president of product management for community systems at IGT. 'We needed to create practices, interfaces that worked, and some official engineering.' nAround that time, then, a fresh standards human body emerged, the Gaming Standards Association (GSA), and what resulted were standards that could be able the casino operators to immediately tube in communications to players--promotional communications, updates of free buffets and the like--in pop-up windows to the monitors, aside from which manufacturer's devices they were playing. Formerly, it'd not have been possible. nFor businesses like WMS and IGT, this change in philosophy was nothing short of a major retrenching, but one they thought they no choice but to adopt. n'Pretty significantly, IGT had to.abandon all past growth that leveraged old, exclusive protocols,' Saenz said. 'It was a massive undertaking.' nInstead, he explained, the four manufacturers have adopted what they call open networks, a new expression for server-based gambling built around systems made to provide casino operators the variety of new server-based technology they want, while also meeting the security and communications targets of the GSA. nGetting the requirements set up was step one, needless to say, and according to Mark Lipparelli, a part of the Nevada Gaming Get a grip on Board--which adjusts casinos in that state--they were applied in November of 2005, just months after that year's G2E. nThe larger problem, then, was just how long it would simply take for the outcomes of this standardization to manifest in industry-wide roll-outs of server-based gaming. n'The widespread adoption and implementation of the secure system technologies,' Lipparelli said, 'will be more of an industry function.' Nothing unanticipated--at the time, at least--result of the philosophical shift is that the industry's major manufacturers came around, for the very first time, to the recognition that their technology must be interoperable, in at least some basic ways. nBanking on client loyaltynThese times, a huge portion of successful casino operations is best determining how not just to get a new player to bring their money onto your floor, but also how to get that individual to join your loyalty program and go back to among your houses again and again. nFor companies like MGM/Mirage, for example, that type of customer acquisition and preservation is important, particularly in a town like Vegas, where the giant currently owns ten main properties--including Bellagio, the MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, The Luxor and others--and will soon open up City Center. Making it possible for its clients to play games and feel welcome and valued at every one of its casinos is simply in regards to the most significant point MGM/Mirage or any one of its competitors can perform. nAnd that's why, while an IGT machine however won't work activities from Bally--at least not any moment soon--the four manufacturers seem to came around to the notion that their technology needed to give the casino operators a whole lot more get a grip on within the messaging people would see on those machines. nAdditionally, Saenz said, the gaming machines will require to have the ability to access the casinos' databases of customer names and information, aside from who made the device, in order to serve up information that is personal to each user. nnA schematic of a server-based gaming system from WMS Gaming.n( Credit: WMS Gaming) nBut even as big organizations like MGM/Mirage obtain into server-based gaming, the ownership of such devices will probably be slow. nAs of today, Bone said, WMS has about 1,500 server-based models implemented around the globe. He imagines that casinos will begin to roll-out server-based gambling on a 'bank by bank' base, indicating one element of machines at a period, in the place of by changing full floors at once. nThat means, Bone said, that the technology is going gain traction throughout the casino industry within the next two to three years. nIGT's Saenz agreed with that analysis. nAt the moment, he explained, the company has five server-based gaming area trials, two in Nevada and one each in California, Missouri, and Michigan. nLots of computers, a great deal of rewiringnOf course, the impending City-center beginning will probably be the major coming out party IGT's--and the industry's--server-based gambling technology has been awaiting. But while that start will mean that up-to 2000 machines seriously line at once, Saenz said that there are functional reasons why the technology will be slow to spread, nevertheless. nPart of that could be because of structure. So that you can throw out server-based games, Saenz directed out, casinos need to have Ethernet networks deployed on the floors. That's something that few casinos have achieved up to now, he said, adding that people who do have a much quicker road to the newest technology. n'Historically, there was an expectation that when server-based gaming appeared, (casinos) would amazingly rewire their entire floors,' Saenz said, 'and suddenly there would be server-based gaming. But that's not realistic.' nThat is just why he wants to see roll-outs a hundred machines at a time through the entire business, although not much faster than that. n'In a few years,' Saenz said, 'the majority of casinos will involve some server-based games, and (a few) will be 100 %' rolled-out.