GGRAsia – Chinese slot themes working worldwide for Sci Games

Chinese slot themes working worldwide for Sci Games

Nov 20, 2019 Newsdesk Latest News, MGS Entertainment Show 2019

Scientific Games Corp, a global supplier of casino games and lottery services, says it is capitalising on the success – outside as well as inside Asia – of its Chinese-themed slot products.

“We are expanding our game development labs on the slots side, globally – and continuing our Chinese-theme lines,” confirmed Ken Jolly (pictured), the group’s managing director for Asia, in comments to GGRAsia.

He was speaking on the firm’s stand at the recent MGS Entertainment Show, a casino trade exhibition and conference held in Macau.

“If you go back to ‘Duo Fu Duo Cai’ it was designed for Macau, and now it’s a product all around the world and successful all around the world,” Mr Jolly explained, referring to a slot machine games series encompassing progressive jackpots and a popular game jackpot feature, the “Fu Babies”.

“‘Jin Ji Bao Xi’, also designed for Macau, is also going global as well,” he noted, referring to another popular Chinese-themed game series. At the start of this year, Scientific Games announced it had launched the series in so-called “Class III” – i.e., commercial casino – markets in North America.

Players outside Asia – not only among the Chinese diaspora worldwide – were “adopting” the Chinese-themed games, the executive believed.

A possible reason was that there was no substitute for “great maths” on games; something those products had, Mr Jolly noted.

“One of our mathematicians is extraordinarily good – particularly when it comes to [game] concepts and volatility,” he told us.

Industry commentators often mention that game volatility – that can involve sudden bonuses or jackpots without extended periods of play, sometimes followed by certain periods without reward – is popular among players in the Macau market.

Volatility in games had “played a more important role” in the Macau market than “in more mature markets,” noted Mr Jolly.

He outlined that while Singapore’s two casinos – which opened in 2010 – had not been in the regional market as long as the first new resorts opened in post-liberalisation Macau, “a lot of the influence” in slot play in Singapore came from the city-state’s clubs market or from Malaysia’s single-resort setup. This meant Singapore was a “much more mature market” for slots, and “volatility is not as important there”.

At MGS Entertainment Show 2019, Duo Fu Duo Cai was presented on Scientific Games’ recently-launched DualosX cabinet (also pictured).

The platform features a 27-inch main screen, 27-inch top screen and 27-inch topper, and runs the new ArgOS operating system used globally in the group’s slots and electronic tables products.

DualosX was already “live in the Philippines,” and the firm has done the first deliveries of the platform for the Macau market, Mr Jolly confirmed, without identifying specific properties.