At G2E, the Big Three attract most of the attention, have probably the most crowded booths, and get a lot of press. Of course, Aristocrat, IGT and Scientific Games all deserve it; they are the clear the sales leaders. And if you expand it to the Big Four, you have to include Konami, which is always a steady performer, as well.
Everi’s PlayerClassic
But the “little” guys are on the move. At a G2E presentation for financial investors, the Eilers & Krejcik Gaming team showed recent research indicating that non-Big Three suppliers had gone from a 16% share in 2013 to a 36% share today. Everi is one of the vendors driving that percentage upward. They could also soon be a candidate for Top Five honors. In the monthly Eilers indexes, Everi has the Number One spot for both Mechanical Reel and Large Top Box cabinets – and that’s against the stiff competition mentioned above.
If you’re new to the industry, you may not know that Everi is both a financial services company and a slot vendor. Their slot heritage comes from MultiMedia Games, which has been around for decades. The breakthrough for their reel spinners came with the release of the “Players Classic” cabinet with a “Skyline” top box. With the “Double Jackpot Gems” theme, the game quickly became a star, especially in high limit rooms and on end caps everywhere.
Despite over a decade on floors, the cabinet, now rebranded as Everi, remains a top performer in multiple themes today. The latest version of “Double Jackpot Gems” adds a wheel to the top box. And really, doesn’t everything work better with a wheel?
Another Everi innovation was the first successful automated slot tournament system: TournEvent. While they’ve attracted competitors, it still remains the category leader, with a steady stream of new themes and features. This year’s G2E also marks the seventh year of their Million Dollar Event, in which they host a playoff of regional winners for the title prizes.
A more recent offering from Everi is the impressive “Discovery Channel’s Shark Week,” on the Empire Arena video platform. This game has quickly climbed the charts and is a solid top performer. The cabinet format of five games comes in a relatively small footprint, but it makes a big impact on players with strong 55″ high vertical monitors mounted over a touch-capable 27” landscape monitor.
The Vault
The latest theme just out in GLI jurisdictions is The Vault. The game has many of today’s popular mechanics, like lock-and-respin, free spins, and pick bonuses, plus a unique timed-bonus round that triggers a community-style feature in which all players compete to steal diamonds from other players on the bank. The attention-grabbing bonus round, “Empty The Vault,” gets intense as the clock (two or three minutes) winds down. It’s always difficult to predict a new winner, but it would be a surprise if The Vault didn’t soon rank as a top performer.
If these weren’t enough, the new upscale core cabinet known as the Empire Flex could definitely take Everi to new heights. Having a strong core box is critical for vendors (and for slot directors.) The “Flex” name is descriptive – the box is highly modular and offers a variety of lighting effects that can be added for a wide, or narrowed for a more modest, footprint. These lighting effects also descend to the floor, making the cabinets standout in a sea of higher-mounted LEDs. Standing out is definitely something that Everi has achieved with their new offerings at G2E.
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