G2E featured new eye-catching slot games, innovative cabinets

The latest and top offerings successful slot machines were connected afloat show this week arsenic gaming manufacturers gathered successful Las Vegas for the industry’s largest commercialized show.

“This is not new, but you spot it happening much and more. They look to video games, societal games and games that we play connected our phones. That’s each astir achieving and getting the adjacent level,” said Josh Swissman, founding spouse of the Las Vegas-based gaming and hospitality consulting steadfast The Strategy Organization.

It’s each astir offering the gamblers the astir immersive and entertaining experiences imaginable arsenic companies are hoping to pat into what motivates radical to enactment engaged and walk much money, Swissman said.

With screens that are bigger and brighter than ever, a increasing database of achievements to unlock and adjacent colorful cartoon characters telling you however overmuch you’ve won, the continued gamification of slots was evident astatine this year’s Global Gaming Expo held wrong the Venetian Expo.

Bigger, and bigger, and bigger…

Megabucks is getting bigger — literally.

IGT unveiled its caller Peak65 furniture astatine this week’s amusement that, arsenic the sanction suggests, features a 65-inch progressively curved display. The institution showed its caller monolithic furniture with 2 of its astir iconic games — Megabucks and Wheel of Fortune — connected display.

But that wasn’t adjacent the biggest surface connected this year’s amusement floor.

Aristocrat Gaming showed disconnected its brand-new Neptune Canopy that features not lone aggregate dual curved displays, but an overhead canopy surface that connects with different slot cabinets.

“The adjacent measurement successful gaming is truly to beryllium connected the cutting borderline of entertainment,” said Jon Hanlin, elder vice president of commercialized strategy and concern analytics for Aristocrat.

Play the classics

The gaming machines support changing, but the classical franchises that person dominated the abstraction for decades aren’t going anywhere.

For gaming companies putting their iconic franchises onto their newest cabinets isn’t conscionable astir trying to get the astir eyeballs connected it. That marque familiarity allows companies to connection caller cabinets oregon adjacent somewhat caller mechanics without overwhelming the customer.

Phil O’Shaughnessy, vice president of planetary communications for IGT, said that’s wherefore there’s been much than 300 antithetic iterations of the celebrated Wheel of Fortune slot implicit the franchise’s 25 years successful operation.

“When you enactment the world’s astir iconic licensed taxable onto your latest introduction, it’s a winning operation each time,” O’Shaughnessy said.

Companies specified arsenic Scientific Games person taken akin approaches, with that shaper putting iconic brands similar Willy Wonka, Monopoly and Wizard of Oz onto brand-new cabinets similar the Kaskada Jewel.

“It’s not needfully astir these caller and chaotic frontiers that different suppliers are looking at. It’s however bash we leverage those unthinkable franchises that we have,” said Matt Wilson, CEO of the gaming part for Scientific Games.

Make it retro

While astir of the slots connected the G2E level looked similar thing retired of an arcade, a fistful looked similar thing consecutive retired of a 1980s casino floor.

And that was by design.

Companies specified arsenic Everi with its “Player Classic Signature,” Scientific Games’ “Blazing 7s,” and IGT’s Diamond RS each had brand-new mechanical reel slots connected display.

The retro-style slots springiness those older, but inactive fashionable cabinets a caller beingness by bringing them into the integer age, including the summation of integer displays and the integration of cashless gaming compatibility.

Bradley Rose, elder vice president of crippled improvement for Everi, said it was astir making precise tiny modifications, “kept existent to what the subordinate loves.”

“Don’t alteration what’s working, but marque it better,” helium said.

Contact Colton Lochhead astatine clochhead@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ColtonLochhead connected Twitter.