The goal of Aristocrat Gaming’s MarsX Portrait Cabinet is to make the gaming console relevant and appealing to slots players.
Designers created aesthetically pleasing visual displays, incorporated features to enhance ease of play, and tried to ensure the console itself was comfortable for players. And in a nod to an inextricable part of contemporary life, the MarsX also includes a wireless cell phone charger.
“That’s a big part of everyone’s life right now,” says Sony Syamala, vice president of commercial game strategy for Aristocrat Gaming. “We can’t even leave our homes without a phone in hand. You feel naked without your phone, and charging is a bigger problem, too.”
Sony Syamala, vice president of commercial game strategy for Aristocrat Gaming
The MarsX Portrait Cabinet was designed to appeal to core players — Syamala says they’re between 45-50 – who have disposable incomes and use iPhones or smartphones. Three slots game families – Cash Across, Fu Dai Lian Lian, and Triple Grand Fortunes – are featured and also designed to appeal to those core players.
“If the game is not engaging players may walk away from it after (spending) forty dollars and may never come back to it,” Syamala says, noting that even though a game might seem attractive, it’s the quality of play that brings players back.
Each game features an element that is “chased” by slot players.
“It can be free bonus games, or it can be a jackpot value,” Syamala says. “. . . In this game, there are 36 different features that players can chase. For an average game, there are two or three features. So in having that wide variety of features, every time you experience a feature, you’re experiencing something new.”
It’s also big. The MarsX cabinet features a curved gaming screen capable of showing 16.7 billion colors. That’s important, but 27-inch “topper” screen is just as, if not more, important in driving traffic to the games.
“That topper is what you’re going to see from a distance,” Syamala says, noting the screen will display jackpot values.
“A good portion of all players really chase these jackpots,” he adds.
Aristocrat designers also consulted with IT technicians during product development. One feature enables techs to open machines from the front – think of it like opening the hood of a car – to do maintenance, and not interrupt play at nearby machines.
There are currently seven games available through the MarsX cabinet, with 12 more scheduled for release by September.
