We would like to extend our best wishes and condolences to the family of Joaquín Franco Muñoz, co-founder of one of the largest global gaming companies, who died in Madrid last month, aged just 70.

UK Jukebox operators can rest assured that once again Soundnet has its finger on the nation’s pulse with an eye to getting it to spend the cash in its pocket. The music supply specialist has created a special X Factor fever dedicated category on its jukeboxes, which is not only free but updated weekly to reflect the different categories tackled by the X Factor contestants.

Gaming machines provider The Global Draw has unveiled three new reel-based games for customers in Mexico.

Thai Flower, Amazon Eyes and Rosetta’s Stones have been tailored for the local market and released onto terminals in gaming venues operated by Corporacion Intermericana de Entertenimiento (“CIE”).

IGT-UK Group has announced that Alex Stephens, Director of Business Development for IGT-UK Group, will take responsibility for the Million-2-1 business with immediate effect.  Alex’s appointment fills the position held by Chris Sheffield who recently left the business to pursue other interests.

Funworld hosted ist first International Funwin poker workshop in Munich last month. The two-day event focused on the latest products, trends and developments in the online skill game and poker sector.

Over 100 customers and partners from around the globe participated in the workshop and used the opportunity to update themselves on the innovations and exchange their experiences.

The IOA Group, one of  Britain’s leading operators of gaming and leisure equipment has secured what is widely regarded as representing the best health and safety cover available to organisations in the sector following its partnership with Peninsula Business Services.

More than 100 UK pubs are now fully utilising ‘ticket out’ machine technology instigated by digital gaming supplier Games Media.

 Pubs running the new payout system reportedly saw not only additional cashbox improvement comparable to the uplift seen from the recent increase in stake and prize levels but also clear operational and marketing advantages.

MEI was awarded the “Most Effective Customer Support” award on October 6th during the gala held by the Balkan Entertainment and Gaming Expo in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Joaquín Franco Muñoz, co-founder of one of the largest gaming companies in the world, died in Madrid last month, aged 70.

Born in the region of Toledo in 1938, he was one of the most enterprising businessmen of his generation, founding Recreativos Franco in 1975 in Madrid, together with his brother Jesús.

Novatic from Wroclaw in Silesia has been appointed NSM Music distributor for Poland following the successful launch of the Icon2 jukebox at this year’s Surexpo Exhibition in Warsaw. An impressive number of knowledgeable visitors to the Novatic stand were given full details of the product’s many features by the ever enthusiastic Novatic staff led by Magdalena Szumska.

Sound Leisure welcomed almost 60 delegates to its premises last month for its two Technical Training days. They were given a tour of the factory and spent time in front of the latest products with trained Sound Leisure personnel in order to fully understand the features and capabilities of Sound’s wide range of jukeboxes.

Eurocoin and Motorola are celebrating the recent birthday of the barcode by announcing two promotional offers.

Anybody who registers their interest in the Motorola Mini Scan range at www.eurocoin.co.uk will go into a free prize draw with the opportunity to win one of many  fantastic Motorola prizes including Walkie Talkie’s, House Phones, Mobile Phones, Bluetooth handset and memory sticks.

Three TAB Austria Holding employees were honoured for their many years of service and dedication at a grand Company Party. Ing. Siegfried Dattl jun., managing director, thought up a very special surprise for the celebratory presentation.

Praesepe plc, the gaming group led by former BACTA National President Nick Harding, is set to complete its third acquisition in four months with the £6.3m (€6.7m/$9.9m) purchase of nine Adult Gaming Centres (AGCs) and four Family Entertainment Centres (FECs) from Case Concepts. All of the AGC sites will be re-branded under the Cashino marque. The FEC sites, which include Weston-Super-Mare, Burnham-on-Sea and Ilfracombe, will continue to trade under their current brand names whilst they are assimilated into the Group.

Merkur Gaming , subsidiary of the Gauselmann Group, has launched its newly-styled, innovative website under www.merkur-gaming.com. The reason for the new internet presence is the new positioning of M Merkur Gaming as a specialist for the development and international sales of AWPs as well as casino slots with a focus on multi-games.

Last month Euromat released its publication entitled “Responsible Gambling: a Statement of Principles and a Showcase of Best Practice from the European Gaming and Amusement Industry”.

The launch took place in the European Parliament at an event co-hosted by two very known figures in the European debate about gambling policy, MEP Christel Schaldemose of Denmark and MEP Toine Manders of the Netherlands, respectively Rapporteur and Shadow Rapporteur of the first European Parliament’s own-initiative report on gambling.

During the IMA show, MEI will be exhibiting its portfolio of products including the CASHFLOW SC—the product that has raised the standard for bill validators across the globe.  MEI CASHFLOW SC now features mechanical and software security enhancements, further protecting operators from manipulation and frauds. Also presented on the booth will be the new GEO Gravity, a multiwidth stackerless bill validator intended for smaller scale casinos and amusement operators.

Mazooma is re-launching its brand as a digital content provider to bookmakers and online casinos.

Tony Oliver, Managing Director of Mazooma, said: “Eighteen months ago, we embarked on a strategy to focus on delivering gaming content utilizing both the Bell-Fruit and Mazooma brands.

How come the SuperEnalotto jackpot has leapt to excessive levels again? Asking this question are the managers of the Osservatorio Antiplagio. In fact the jackpot for the next draw, which we recall will be held on Thursday 5th November, is officially confirmed as taking 3rd place in the classified list of the highest winnings ever in Italy and taking second place for the highest prize in the World. The Osservatorio Antiplagio points out that in order to understand the reason why the Superenalotto jackpot has risen to such excessive levels, it is interesting to observe the sequences in the recent draws.

In October, Italians spent 232.2 million euro on the virtual tables, which is 11.3% more than in September. This is a new record in takings, given that the previous one belonged to the previous month when takings amounted to 209 million euro. In the first 10 months of 2009 takings have exceeded 1,827 million euro, a value which if extrapolated to the end of the year means a market of more than 2.2 billion euro.

Great disappointment over the new V7 horse betting. After little more than four months it is clear that this new form of gaming is not taking off, on the contrary things are getting worse, showing the clearly limited popularity and interest among the gamblers.

There were frenetic moments last month for the 10 licensees of the newslot connection networks. Up for grabs were approximately 60 thousand permits for the installation of the new gaming terminals called comma 6b, more commonly known as video lotteries. For approximately 57 thousand permits (14% of the permits for the New Slots) the licensees will have to pay an anticipated 15 thousand euro.

On 22nd October, the judging panel met in the offices of the Europer Association (Association of Catalonian operators) belonging to the PIMEC Confederation (Confederation of Small and Medium Commercialised Businesses) to decide on the 4th biennial amusement awards. These awards identify at a national level those companies and people from the Spanish world of amusement whose main objective is to make everyone aware of the reality of a very dynamic business sector.

SERVITRONIC has been in the market place for 25 years. It started trading in October 1984 in the Andalucian city of Seville with inexhaustible reserves of capital, capital which was none other than its own human capital. For just under two years the initial premises of the company remained small. Then Andrés A. Soto Acuña became president of the company. After five years of consolidating the firm as a distributor in the Andalucian region for the best manufacturers of amusement machines, midway through 1992 negotiations began with the larger and most important group of companies, not only in Spain, but also the most important internationally-speaking, the CIRSA Group.

AGEO, the Galician Association of Operating Companies, is questioning the data on receipts from type B amusement machines in Galicia in the 2008 Annual Report on Gaming in Spain, produced by the Ministry of the Interior. This report talks about an increase of 72% in receipts in the Galician region in comparison to those for the previous year. However, for AGEO these data are simply estimates, since they do not take into account the fact that there are a significant number of machines that are inoperative in the warehouse or temporarily suspended.

Zhanjiang City, Guangdong Province will start constructing the first yacht club in the area around Beibu Gulf at the end of 2009. The project will cost close to RMB$400 million and is predicted to be completed in 2013. 

Organized by GTI Magazine, GTI Asia Taipei Expo 2010 will take place at B & C Zones, Hall 1, Taipei World Trade Center in Taipei, Taiwan on May 2~4, 2010.  The registration for overseas exhibitors has kicked off.  The first phase of booth selection and assignment process for close to 20 VIP companies will begin in mid December. 

Minister Mao Chi-kuo of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications went to Singapore to attend the APEC Ministerial Meeting. Considering the future planning and development of Taiwan’s gaming industry, Mao Chi-kuo listened to the briefing given by the casino regulatory authority in Singapore and casino operator Genting Group which runs Resorts World at Sentosa.

To further promote economic interactions between China and Taiwan, the Guangzhou Branch of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade organized a delegation to Taipei to attend the “Taipei-Guangzhou Trade Week 2009” from November 4 to 11. 

It became official at the close of business on October 30…the International Association for the Leisure and Entertainment Industry (IALEI) ceased to operate. The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA). It is estimated that 559 IALEI- comprised of 476 family entertainment centers and 83 suppliers will transition to IAAPA. Current memberships will be honored through December 31, 2010.

The American Amusement Machine Association (AAMA) has launched a new Facebook industry-themed “fan page”, called “Out-Of-Home Entertainment“. The social network site has 60 million U.S. members, and AAMA is positioning the page as the Internet hub for coin-op. They also want to reach the player base.

The Amusement and Music Owners Association of New York (AMOA-NY) believes the law is vital to protecting operator-location agreements. The trade group aims to protect its latest contract samples, which stipulates service terms between operators and locations, and is available only for members.

A year after the Pennsylvania’s Gaming Control Board made $5 million available to local law enforcement for targeting gray-area pokers, many police and prosecutors across the state are returning the money and saying “thanks, but no thanks.”

Illinois amusement operators are growing afraid of scaled down participation in legalized video poker.  Cook County, home of Chicago and America’s second largest county with 128 municipalities and five million-plus people, voted twice this fall to reject legalized, operator-run video poker. To date, more than two dozen municipalities across Illinois have voted to opt out.

CZECH REPUBLIC

The Lisbon Treaty has finally been ratified by the Czech Republic, which means the text is now expected to come into force on 1 December. President Vaclav Klaus added his signature just hours after the treaty was given the go ahead by the Czech Constitutional Court. The Swedish Presidency of the EU is now expected to announce an extraordinary summit for mid-November, in which it will be decided who will be the President of the European Council, and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs, two new positions created by the treaty. Source: Euromat

Germany had a new law in 2006, which allowed greater freedom in the design of AWP machines but which banned fun games, which were previously popular in the country.

Coin-operated amusement machines comprise three different product groups in Germany:

• Amusement machines with prizes (AWPs), which are strictly regulated by the German Gaming Ordinance.
• A second group contains gaming machines without prizes, such as touch-screen machines, video games, pinball machines etc. Until the end of 2005, fun games were also part of this category. Since 1 January 2006 – when the new German Gaming Ordinance went into effect – these once widespread machines have been prohibited.
• A third group includes sport-game machines, such as billiards, darts, table soccer, air-hockey etc.

There’s no sign of any crisis here - quite the opposite, in fact,” says IMA event manager Petra Lassahn about the IMA show in Düsseldorf in January.

Following the significant increases posted last year, the IMA looks set to continue its growth in 2010. “The goal of up to 250 exhibiting companies is ambitious, but from where we stand right now, it’s entirely realistic,” continues Petra.

The spinning reels of a fruit machine create an image that can be found almost everywhere. You can often see them on game shows (usually with the old fashioned handle) or on TV news coverage, to illustrate some political point. Strangely, you often find the spinning wheels on video gaming machines – despite the fact that the video interface allows limitless options to convey the same message to the player.

Face Bank, the surreal Japanese coin-munching piggy bank that’s being marketed to the European amusements and retail sectors by Brent Electronic, has a new admirer in the form of television broadcaster Tim Lovejoy.

Avalue is announcing the high scalability of RISC-based embedded computing modules incorporated with the latest micro controllers based on ARM9, ARM11, and Cortex-A8 technology, and embedded software developing capabilities, providing low cost embedded computing solutions includes SoMs, SBCs, and Panel PCs to expand the applications in industrial fields.

SEGA Republic, a 76,000-square-foot indoor theme park, located at The Dubai Mall, is the Middle East’s largest theme park and is the first venue in the United Arab Emirates to introduce guests to Virtual Bowling by Brunswick.

TransAct Technologies has announced that its Epic 950 printer was selected exclusively by Spielo Manufacturing ULC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lottomatica Group S. p. A., to be installed in all of its new Comma 6b server-based video lottery terminals (VLTs) in Italy.

Bay Tek Games is excited to announce an addition to its quick coin product line, Jam Session. Bay Tek Games has revamped its quick coin game with a guitar rock theme.

“We have had many successful quick coin games in our 32 year history and Jam Session is sure to join the ranks with the rest,” commented Marketing Manager, Holly Meidl, “It’s a small footprint game that will pack a large punch from an earnings standpoint!”

Chang Yu Electronic Co., Ltd has introduced its latest game: Numbers 4 Luck. This is an exciting experience for all types of players. The aim of the game is to get 4 of the same numbers in order to win a big prize.

Smart Industries introduced Crack the Code at the recent AMOA. It is a self-merchandising game where players have to match a series of rotating numbers to the combination of the safe.  If they successfully match the code, they can vend a minor prize or risk it all to try for the final code and win a major prize.  This game features great lighting and sounds, as well as sharp-looking decals.

Innocore Gaming Ltd, one of the leading manufacturers of PC based gaming platforms has announced a new product for the Italian market. The DPX®-E110-6a is a complete industrial computer system for the Italian gaming market designed especially to comply with the requirements of AAMS and Comma6a legislation.  The system offers good performance and very low power with the cost effective Intel® ATOMTM processor. In its typical configuration, the system is fanless and supports single or dual monitors. There is also a taller version that can support a high performance graphics card.

At G2E 2009 JCM Global unveiled the iVIZION bill validator featuring Contact Image Sensor (CIS) Technology, combined with transparency and reflective sensors that scan 75 times more data points than competitive products. The result is the most powerful sensor capabilities available, giving operators a 99%+ acceptance rate on valid banknotes and the most diligent counterfeit protection.

LAI Games unveiled its two newest novelties at the IAAPA Show in Las Vegas last month: Star Blitz Mini Photo Booth and Little Masterpiece, the latest touch-screen coloring game for creative kids. LAI Games also released its updated version of Textminator featuring a much faster game play.