Aristocrat Technologies’ General Manager Asia Pacific David Punter is under the spotlight in the latest instalment of IAG’s video interview series with leading members of the Asian gaming industry. Mr Punter replies to critics’ claims that Aristocrat’s dominance in the Asian slot sector has made it slow to innovate and develop new games, and explains what his company has in store to maintain its market-leading position.
Earlier this year, Aristocrat launched its Viridian WideScreen (WS) cabinet with a strong suite of supporting games. The Viridian WS has done well so far, consolidating Mr Punter’s position on our Asian Gaming 50 list.
Mr Punter explained to Inside Asian Gaming it was important to assemble a collection of robust supporting products before launching WS. “In previous years, we’ve launched a new cabinet but without perhaps the right games, so the feeling was that the cabinet hadn’t performed, whereas it had been the content that hadn’t worked. We’ve certainly learnt from the lessons of the past, and when launching the Viridian WS cabinet it was paramount that we had both a strong standalone and linked product portfolio to ensure our continued Asian success.
IAG publisher Kareem Jalal caught up with Mr Punter at Aristocrat’s Macau showroom for the latest instalment in the INSIGHTS series, produced in collaboration with Aomen TV, a member of the Ignite Media Group. Below is a transcript of the interview.
Kareem Jalal: Aristocrat’s been top dog in the Asian slot sector for a long time, and so some people say you can only go down from here. What are you doing to maintain your position?
David Punter: We consider ourselves like a premium player in the market. I wouldn’t consider ourselves top dog, even though we’ve got great market share. I think we can’t be arrogant about that. If you take a step back from that, we are really looking at how we can do better product strategies to meet our players’ needs and our customers’ needs.
Some key examples of that are some of our ‘Asianising’ of our products. That doesn’t mean all our products have to have Asian art and Asian graphics, but moving forward we are looking at a stronger portfolio with that content in it for 2012 and 2013 and beyond.
On answering your question about can we go down? Well, yes, we can, but we are very confident that we’re starting to understand some of the unique aspects of the market that are coming out: more feature-rich games, games with top boxes, entertainment-style games. Whether we should be entering the market with steppers and those types of products is yet to be considered.
Some more US-style product games can be built into the portfolio. That’s all about speed to market, understanding your market, your strategies, working with your operators and your players more. I think that’s a key success story for Aristocrat where we have been building our market share over the last couple of years; not greatly, but a couple of percentage points every year. I’d like to maintain that. It’s a core focus for me, the team at the Sydney office and R&D that we focus on those key elements and understand changes in the market with technology as well as what products work and building on some of our great brands and extensions that are already in the marketplace.
There’s a perception that Aristocrat is slow to innovate and develop new games. What’s your response to that?
I’d say technology-wise we’re probably a little bit behind where the US is with some of our cabinets and LCD buttons, but they’re coming. We have put some strategies in place to expedite what we take to the US markets and bring that to other markets, including Australia, in a lot faster fashion. Developing a common base which can be used across common markets rather than having different bases is one way we are looking at speeding up that process of taking technology and content.
I’d also say we kind of sit back and have a look at some of our products—not all the products from the US and Australia should drop straight in the market. That’s been proven to be a failure in many cases as well. We take a bit of a step back, have a look at what we think might work, work with our R&D and games designers and pick the best out of a portfolio of product to take to market. Maybe [we’re] a little bit slow in technology, but we’re fast catching up in that space to make sure that we’ve got the right strategy there.
Although you’re constantly rolling out new games, two of your titles, 5 Dragons and 50 Dragons, are still your staple products. Their longevity and popularity is nothing short of remarkable. But do you also see that as a bit of a curse?
It’s a very interesting question. I’d rather be the company that has them than the company that doesn’t have them. That’s probably not tongue-in-cheek; that’s an answer. I’d rather have those games and build on that brand loyalty. Now, those titles are still popular for every new casino opening, new property expansion that’s happening. We’ve taken a lot of those successful titles through Xcite [Aristocrat’s previous game platform], into 19 inch, and into our WideScreen products. That just gives us a good solid base to build off.
What we are looking at is doing some brand extensions into those product categories which you can see with 5 Dragons Legends and doing some other titles like possibly doing 50 Dragons Legends and some expansions of that. So, as long as it’s performing and you can leverage off that and the players adopt those games and like those games, then it’s a win-win for both Aristocrat and the operator and also the player.
Sure, we are trying to make games very different to that and test that and see if there is player acceptance there. That’s one of the key opportunities that I want to drive going forward in the business.
We’ve got some new styles of games like Remix™ and Imperial House, where you can drag and drop. Some of those concepts may be the next 5 Dragons or may be the next 50 Lions. We are not being complacent, we’ve just got to try some new concepts out in that space. Hopefully, the players gravitate to that and then we can run with a new suite of games after that.
You recently developed a custom slot game for Wynn Macau: the Tree of Prosperity. What’s the background to that?
From both Wynn’s and our perspective, Wynn approached us about doing a game specifically for them and it was a bit of a new initiative from Aristocrat’s perspective. We haven’t done a game like that that I can recollect in our history. So, without going into too many details, [it was] a very good collaboration between Wynn and our game studios, our marketing and our sales guys to see if we could develop a product that related to Wynn’s ‘Tree of Prosperity’ [an animated sculpture] in one of their main foyers. We took some of those assets and put them on a good solid maths package and got it [the product] to market. We probably did that in around nine to 12 months. From our side of things it’s been very positive and I believe the performance for Wynn has been very strong as well and they are happy with the product.
And can you tell us a bit about your online strategy?
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In general the company is looking at the online space. We’ve got some great assets which we believe can transfer into different platforms, online being one. Lottery is another one and the server based space as well. We’re at an early stage of introducing games to the online environment. Obviously, there are regulations around the way you can and can’t do that—restrictions. But what we have found with some things like we’ve released some apps on the Apple iStore—there is Geisha, Sun and Moon, 5 Dragons, Imperial House, and a few more games coming—is a lot of the people who are playing those games are actually from the Asian regions. The majority are from the US, but when you combine a lot of the Asian countries together, almost most of them are being played by players in the Asian region. The adoption of that technology and Apple’s technology and iPads and those types of product providers means it’s a space we cannot not look at because I think our assets are very strong, they’re ours with IP around them, and we can leverage those into many other platforms, whether it’s online or server based or lotteries or apps.
Do you think the dominance of VIP baccarat in Macau is hindering the growth of slots?
I think VIP baccarat and baccarat is always going to be a major player in Macau and certain Asian regions. But I suppose what we’ve noticed is there is a VIP slot player that exists as well, nowhere near the extent of the VIP baccarat player, but that high-end player which, since we’ve got a majority of the machines in the VIP room, is very positive for us. There is a little bit of correlation between players coming across from tables to slots. Where we can pinpoint that, I’m not sure. But as the Macau region grows, the revenues of the slots are growing. We’ve been in the marketplace now for six or seven years. There is a real slot player out there who is coming over and playing slots rather than playing tables. That’s a focus for us to make sure that we provide the right products for that emerging slot player and new games and new game banks and interesting combinations of games. I don’t think it’s going to hurt the baccarat sector too much, but maybe there is some relationship between our games and baccarat that we could incorporate in the future.
