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Touchingly profitable
Replacing chips and cards with bytes and pixels can hike revenue and hamper cheats, according to proponents. And in the latest twist on fashionable retro, the newest casino technology is also mimicking some of the oldest.
Slovenian vendor Gold Club is using 3M's surface capacitive technology – touchscreens, in plainer words – in a range of machines including video slots. The MicroTouch technology provided by 3M includes feedback effects, so that when the player presses an on-screen button they see it depress, hear a click, and feel a vibration, just as they would with an old-fashioned mechanical button.
Said Francesco Fasoglio, Business Manager at 3M's Touch Systems Division: “Game designers are looking for new ways to enhance players’ gaming experience and keep them engaged for longer. Tactile feedback response enlivens the usual slot functions and heightens bonus-round play experience.”
The technology is “fast, intuitive and has solved problems we have had in the past with mechanical integration and calibration”, confirmed Boštjan Stopar, General Manager of Gold Club, which is also using it for electronic roulette tables housing up to ten screens apiece.
Touchscreen technology seems to have more tangible bottom-line benefits, too. Shuffle Master, which is using 10.4-inch Zybrid screens from Zytronic in its i-Table gaming tables, says U.S. installations are increasing the number of rounds played per hour by 30 percent as well as cutting out dealing errors, theft of chips, and cheating.
Each of the i-Table units, as big as a traditional gaming table, has six touchscreens for players plus a dealer station, offering Blackjack, Baccarat, Poker and Texas Hold 'Em.
“The i-Table has the look and feel of the live tables that customers prefer without the heavy operating costs or risks of theft and cheating associated with them,” according to Nathan Wadds, Senior VP of R&D at Shuffle Master.
