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>>>GLOBAL GAMES 2013
| Bally Technologies |
Tidal Wave From the new Alpha Pro Wave cabinet to a mind-boggling collection of new games, Bally keeps on rolling
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ou may have heard that Bally Technologies is on a roll in the systems world—setting world records with networked tournaments and virtual races, providing casinos with the ability to custom-tailor bonuses and rewards at the slots, creating a core system that feeds content to online and mobile channels as well as the gaming floor. But you may also have heard that Bally makes slot machines. And it does a pretty good job of it. As its Systems Division has been doing its thing, the Bally slot development team has been getting larger, more spread-out and more diversified. And the product innovations have been pouring forth, out of a development team with no less than 32 game studios from Las Vegas to Arizona to California, to Australia, to India, and more. And by the way, that number is 32— and counting. It’s a lot for Mike Mitchell, vice president of game development and engineering, to keep up with, but Mitchell insists he’s not done building his game design empire for Bally. “We’re constantly building on to our studio system,” Mitchell says. “Some of our newest studios are in Sydney, two in India, two new ones here in Las Vegas and a new one in Reno.” He adds that when Bally, as expected, completes its acquisition of SHFL entertainment, it will add more studios in Sydney, and even one in China. Mitchell says all of Bally’s designers have a constantly growing palette of hardware platforms on which to work, using the unrivaled Alpha 2 slot platform for both video and stepper slots. From the workhorse Pro 22/22 video and Pro Stepper cabinets to the wildly popular V32—the first in the business to use a 32-inch vertical portrait-style monitor, and still Bally’s most popular format—and the newer V22/32 and V22/42 cabinets, plus two new cabinets being launched at this year’s G2E show, Bally hardware provides a huge playground in which Bally game designers can romp. 48
Global Gaming Business SEPTEMBER 2013