Steve, thanks for sitting down with me, I appreciate it. What’s new with Konami, what’s going on this year?
Well we’ve got a lot of new products coming out for the Concerto Crescent and Stack cabinets. They’re both 32-inch screens, Stack is vertical and Crescent is curved. Here at ICE, we’re showing two exciting themes, China Shores Boosted Riches, which is a take on China Shores where you collect Yin and Yang symbols to get some extra prizes or amounts. We’ve got two other new ones, Star Watch Magma and Star Watch Fire, which feature our strike zone game mechanic.
That’s a way for players to increase the size of a special area by betting more, and when certain activities happen in the special area they get extra prizes or trigger a progressive or a spin of the wheel. So if you buy one reel and the stars land on that reel, you get whatever value is on the star. If it lands outside of the special area, you don’t get anything. So it’s really an opportunity for players to see a true value in betting up within the game. There’s a natural relation between the amount a player bets and the prizes they can win. Bet more, win more. It’s out now in the States and rolling out in Europe this year.
Okay, are you seeing good adoption with that?
Fantastic adoption in the States so far, it’s one of our most popular recent products. Also, just really quickly, we’ve got an industry-leading multi-game package on our standard two-screen cabinets with instantaneous switching between games and the flexibility to put any games in the platform on that multi-game package. All of our slot machines, even the single-screens, now have the capacity for multi-game.
What’s the big advantage of multi-game, would you say?
Being able to appeal to various different players at any time. Some of the smaller venues in Europe have to be more discerning about what they put on their floors, and a game that might work for the Tuesday and Wednesday crowd might not work for the Thursday/ Friday crowd. So the machine sits empty. With a multi-game system, you can appeal to both crowds with the same cabinet. Just switch games.
Right, okay. Makes sense. So I wanted to ask you about your new progressive game developments.
We’ve got a lot of new progressives here at ICE, but the two I want to focus on are Smash Smash Festival, which is a piñata breaking game where the prize pool of piñatas increases, but there’s no progressive to the values in the prizes. In other words, whichever piñata you pick you win, and the other piñata goes into the pool, and one player eventually wins the pool and gets to smash all of the piñatas.
Then we’ve got Power Boost Inferno, which is a spinning wheel-style progressive where players bet extra to determine the number of pointers they have. So if they bet ten credits they get one pointer, twenty credits two pointers, and so on. When you trigger the bonus the pointers circle around a ring, and the value on the ring where the pointer stops is what you win. More pointers, more values, more prizes. Another example where betting up gives you more of a chance to earn rewards. And both of these can run with the selection cabinet.
You’re seeing good uptake with those as well?
Fantastic uptake. Power Boost Inferno won’t be out until this summer, but Smash Smash Festival is our leading progressive in Europe right now.
I saw you were doing the panel on skill gaming. Is that something which Konami has a particular interest in? Is it something you’re planning on rolling out, skill games or hybrid games?
You know, Konami is uniquely positioned. We sort of have our foot on both sides of the business. We’ve got an amazing gaming company doing great spinning slot machines, but our heritage is arcade and skill-type games. So how do we marry those two to produce something that uses Konami’s legacy of digital entertainment and great arcade games, and bring it to where you can put a gaming engine to that. We feel we’re uniquely positioned to bring those two together.
Take Beat Square. Beat Square leverages an arcade-style game that is popular in Asia, a great musical Whack-a-Mole type game that people play it for skill just to be able to get their name on the board, like a classic arcade game. Now, we’re able to put a gaming engine on top of it, so not only can you play it for pride and glory, you can play it to win some money at the same time.
I said in the panel that I think there’s going to be a natural evolution. We just have to get better at educating the public about these hybrid or pure-skill gaming option, where people can win money and have that enjoyable arcade experience.
A lot of people that might be attracted to those games aren’t expecting to find those style games where the five reel spinning slot machines are. So we have to get better at educating the public, so that the regulators feel comfortable loosening some of the design criteria to allow us to broaden our products to appeal outside of the five reel slot machines. We’ve got some great partnerships with the Nevada gaming regulators, as well as with other state regulators, to do this, to really provide a better product for players to play. We’re really happy with the partnerships we’ve had.
Am I right in thinking that with a hybrid game, the return to player will always be lower than 100%, or is it possible to have elements of chance and still have an actual +EV game?
It always depends on the game design. If it’s over 100%, and you get players that are good, you don’t make any money. So there has to be a balance. At the same time, you have to show that there’s value to the skill. That’s where the challenge is in the game design: building something that is easy enough for someone to play the first time and entertaining enough to bring them back a hundredth time.
As you were saying in the panel about adaptive play, that seems to be the key.
Exactly.
