Novomatic develops innovative platforms for unrivalled game variety
Multi-game platforms have always been a particular strength for global manufacturing giant Novomatic, and operators visiting the company’s exhibit at last month’s G2E Asia were treated to a look at one of the most powerful advancements in the concept with the Premium-V+ Gaminator.
Fitted on Novomatic’s workhorse Coolfire II platform, and with a choice of 41 games on a single machine, the Premium V+ is guaranteed to have something to satisfy every player. Games are conveniently grouped into five categories for easy identification and access and individually color-coded for instant recognition.
Players can choose from 10 of Novomatic’s most popular video slots in the “Classic Lines” category; or one of 10 top-performing 20-line games in “Multi Lines”; in the “Power Lines” category they can access four 40-line games; or they may opt for a more volatile gaming experience and go with “Fruits,” featuring 10 fast-paced fruit games; or they may want to change it up entirely and move over to the “Specials” category to play a little standalone roulette, poker or bingo.
The Premium-V+ shares its cabinet architecture with the new Super-V+ Gaminator III, so it’s touchscreen-activated and features screens 24 inches wide for an exciting graphics experience and great sound courtesy of an active satellite speaker system with a subwoofer. It supports multiple denominations and can be customized for multiple languages, it’s TITO-ready, is available in a variety of button panel layouts, and comes with a pre-installed door module to fit in all existing player-tracking units.
The Super-V+ was showcased in Macau with a progressive jackpot, “Rise of the Dragon,” on top of several of the latest titles: Garden of Fortune, Golden Scarabs II, Gorilla and Wild Alaska.
“All our machines are interconnected for a mystery progressive running on our Octavian jackpot controller,” explains spokesman Max Lindenberg.
Coolfire II has the power to support a growing number of game mixes on both the Premium-V+ and Super V+ and is available in a variety of Novomatic Multi-Screen Technology cabinets. With support for five languages and multiple denominations, it’s designed for world travel. At G2E, two multi-games mixes in Chinese were shown on the platform.
The idea, says Mr Lindenberg, who specializes in Marketing & Business Development for Austria-based Novomatic, is flexibility. “The operator can decide which way he wants to go, because on many gaming floors they want to have the translated games, and on others they do not, they want to still offer English-language games. We always have language options.”
The Super-V+ comes with added spice in the form of Novomatic Reel Tournament, which allows a casino to inject the floor with an extra competitive thrill by converting multi-games into tournaments, instantly, in real time, on any number of connected machines. They can be configured for “Win Mode”—which offers continual play, where prior to the tournament all participants’ credits are set at zero, the winner being the player who achieves the highest number of credits over the duration of the tournament—or “Credit Mode,” where the participants start with the same preset credit balance and play for a set period of time to see who ends with the highest balance on the credit meter.
“The operator can choose one game from multi-game mixes just by the push of a button,” Mr Lindenberg explains. “They can also do multi-session tournaments, no software changes required, and configure them back to normal mode again, with absolutely zero downtime on the floor.” The company also took the opportunity of the show to highlight its strength on the server-based side of multi-games with the innovative NovoLine Interactive platform.
From both a player’s and operator’s perspective, NovoLine represents state-of-the-art flexibility and choice. It’s a 25-game standalone slot configuration that is SBG-ready for easy plug-and-play interconnectivity with the NovoLine VLT system—which supports a central-server-based RNG and centralized games and jackpot management, accounting, monitoring and reporting, depending on jurisdictional requirements—and the NovoLine Novo Unity II system, which combines electronic live table games and slots on a single platform. So you can play a machine game one minute and switch to roulette with an actual mechanical wheel, or to electronic baccarat, poker or blackjack on a sophisticated 3D virtual layout. It’s like having an entire floor in a single network. And operators can configure their mix how they like and connect any number of player terminals to the games.
“Also, the roulette game is available in different versions: multi-roulette with an automatic wheel, our TouchBet version with a live dealer, and a virtual version based on a random-number generator,” Mr Lindenberg explains. “And you can interconnect as many games as you like, so there is no limitation on the number of connected types of games or the number of connected terminals. And game updates are very easy. If an operator decides that blackjack maybe is not that successful anymore, and they want baccarat, then they can very quickly update a software change to the other game. Everything is interconnected within the server-based structure. This is the future of development, platforms for multiple applications, from slot gaming, to multiplayer up to mobile and online gaming, all off one platform.”
On the systems side, with Octavian ACP (“Accounting Control Progressives”), Novomatic believes it has a solution sufficiently scalable and with the right modularity, to fit the very diverse types of markets that characterize gaming in Asia.
It’s a system suited to “everywhere in the world,” says Mr Lindenberg.
SAS, ASP and X-Series compatible, ACP is a powerful and intelligent accounting and reporting and customer-loyalty system with comprehensive real-time internal and external auditing tools, Web interfaces and cashless, TITO and jackpot management capabilities.
“It’s based on an open-source platform,” as Mr Lindenberg explains, “so adaptations and custom requirements can be done very quickly. And because it’s modular that makes the system very tunable, and also very cost-efficient, which is quite important nowadays.”
The Super-V+ combines an exciting graphics experience with great sound
