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Playtech at I.C.EJanuary 25, 2007 The interactive section of the International Casino Exhibition drawing to a close in London today clearly showed the resilience and flexibility of a multi-billion dollar industry that has survived and prospered despite several attempts to cripple or kill it off by vested interests around the world. The recent attempts by American law enforcers to hamstring financial transactions to offshore online casinos notwithstanding, there was an air of confidence and optimism among exhibitors, backed by ambitious practical plans to take up the American slack by expanding into European and Asian markets.
The turnkey provider Playtech had a strong presence at I.C.E. and we were shown around by bingo marketing manager Ziv Chen. Typical of the attitude we encountered everywhere, Chen was optimistic about the future of the industry and the ability to rebuild elsewhere the lost American market which his company has abandoned, at least for the present. Playtech are working hard on perfecting their "holistic" strategy whereby all of the different sectors that the company serves, from mobile and virtual horseracing to bingo and even land-based kiosk networks are tightly integrated into one, single management interface system with a single account capability for the convenience of players. Such a system has the advantage of common databasing and cross-marketing for operators. The company's recently announced collaboration with a Mexican land casino will enable the operator to give clients a free CD featuring the Playtech gambling suite, spreading the commercial possibilities wider. Extensive work on mobile and other technologies is ongoing, with development and marketing centres across a global range of countries engaging a staff of over 350, 80 percent of whom are involved with development. The easy-to-use operational backend touch-screen facility was demonstrated and is impressively fast and precise. The company now offers products for online casino and poker rooms, live dealer games, virtual horseracing, mobile, skill games and side games with improvements in player-liaison technology and multi-window display among recent innovations. On the live gaming front, the new VIP Baccarat has been adapted from the popular land-based games in Macau, offering interesting game innovations. Playtech have continuous active market research on the go to define and deliver what the player wants in a suite of over 90 games, said Chen. Just one of the results has been the strengthening of the company's bingo offering and network, Scandinavian expansion and the development both with and without partnerships of skill games. Following the acquisition of Tribeca Tables, the player liquidity on the iPoker Network is markedly up, and new games, interfaces and languages are in production. Asian players can expect more activity in their region, extending the release of recent new games like the real money pachinko game Dolphin Paradise and the industry's first solo Mahjong games, with Mahjong being a possible future game release. Watch too for a mystery game branded "Stravaganza". |
Everywhere the same spirit was in evidence, and the
coming months will see real evidence of this as numerous new
technological innovations, new games and marketing roll-outs
take place.