Showtime is upon us once again. Fingers crossed we won’t be trudging through snow to get to see the exhibitions this year. It has certainly been a cold and uncertain start to the new decade but as Tony Blair and his crew infamously once said “Things can only get better.”

Jolly Backer has resigned as Stern Pinball, Inc.’s Director of Domestic Sales to pursue interests outside of the coin operated amusement game industry.

Jolly and his family are moving to San Diego, California, where he is taking a senior management position in Yo Naturals, Inc.  Yo Naturals combines “Yo Zone” vending machines together with a comprehensive natural and organic food distribution program.  The firm specializes in placement of its vending machines in schools, colleges, health clubs and businesses.  Jolly begins his new position at the beginning of January. 

Innocore Gaming Ltd, one of the leading manufacturers of PC based gaming platforms, has announced a new design-win with the leading Italian manufacturer Palese Group s.r.l.

Palese will apply the Innocore DPX® -E110-6a platform in their range of gaming machines for the Italian Comma 6a market.

Avalue has had three of its products honoured Taiwan Excellence Awards, including
the Fanless Super Anti-Vibration Low-Power Smart Industrial Computer, EPS-AT270; the 3.5-inch Micro Smart I/O Module Embedded SBC, ECM-945GSE+ AUX-Series; 
and the Industrial-Grade Modularized Low-Power Interactive Panel PC, LPC-1203.

The management team at Suzo Happ has announced the promotion of Mr. Erik Wijma to Sales Director. Mr. Wijma takes on with immediate effect the responsibility of sales generated from the Suzo Happ Headquarters in Oud Beijerland, The Netherlands.

2010 has begun and Funworld is continuing its successful multiple product strategy on a thorough footing presenting a wealth of brand-new innovations at IMA (hall 8a, stand C25) and at IGE (stand 4122).

ATEI in London is one of the industry’s most important annual meeting places. This year, TAB-Austria will once again have a strong presence as one of the market leaders in the entertainment sector and is set to present numerous new products.

The MAX FIRE Jukebox offers you and your customers national and international charts – automatically and bang up-to-date. In addition to the USA’s Hot 100, the UK’s TOP 75, Germany’s Top 100 and Austria’s Top 40, patrons also have access to the MAX FIRE Jukebox’s own chart list. This way, it is quick and easy to find the songs that have been most requested by patrons.

Two of the largest machine suppliers in Poland have been embroiled in a copyright battle since 2003. Britain’s JPM International has been involved in legal action against Nowopol of Poland and its Ukrainian Distributor Nowoslot in order to support its partners in Eastern Europe, Synot and its authorised subsidiary companies.

APEX Gaming Europe has appointed Darek Borowiec and Franz Plasser. These appointments reflect the growth in demand for APEX Gaming products and services in Italy, Spain and South America.

Astro Corp has confirmed the supply of an initial tranche of 450 complete Video Lottery Terminal systems to CODERE Italy under an exclusive agreement between the two companies. The systems will be sited in multiple locations and will feature games specially designed by Astro Corp for this market.  Astro Corp has also made a financial commitment in respect of 9 year fully renewable licences for the terminals.

Gamestec, the UK’s leading gaming machine and pool table operator, has donated a pool table to Devonport House, a Salvation Army facility in Plymouth, UK.

The table is proving popular with residents at the 60 bed hostel and flat complex.

Brent Sales claims it is bringing the world’s most advanced photo booth to Europe this year. Fantasy Entertainment’s BlaBaBooth, which is being distributed on an exclusive basis by Brent Sales, has according to Brent’s Commercial Director John Brennan ‘redefined the photo booth genre and brought it into the 21st century with a bang.’

With takings exceeding 53.5 billion euro, the gaming sector has recorded an increase of 12.5% over the 47.5 billion collected in 2008. In fact, last year we spent nearly 900 euro per capita chasing the goddess of fortune, which  places us among the top 5 countries in the world for expenditure per capita on gaming. 2009 has been a golden year for the public gaming sector.

According to a judicial source, Lottomatica has lodged an appeal with the Council of State against the cancellation of the call for bids to award the Scratch and Win concession. We recall that the Lazio TAR (Tribunale Amministrativo Regionale – Regional Administrative Tribunal), in its ruling on 20th November 2009, had cancelled the call for bids, receiving the papers from Sisal, as appellant.

Takings from sports betting reached almost 4 billion euro in 2009. In fact, in total, bets worth 3,989 million euro were placed, a 2.1% increase on the 3,908 million collected from the sector in 2008. An increase – explains Agicos – that is very much reduced when one considers that in 2008 sports betting showed an increase of 50% over the 2,591 million placed in 2007.  On-line betting has done decidedly better, with takings of 1207.6 million, representing an increase of 12.9% over the 1069,7 million collected in 2008. Betting on the Internet in 2009 has accounted for 30.3% of the total amount collected.

The group chaired by Manuel Lao appointed a new director just a few months ago in order to give a new impulse to its bingo and amusement arcade business in Spain. Only nine months after his appointment, Albert Puyol, the former managing director of the fashion company Loewe, has left the gaming and leisure Group formed by the conglomerate of Cirsa companies.

The Spanish gaming market has always been a legal maze, suitable only for specialists or for those who, possessed with an infinite patience, are able to digest the interminable legislative changes that are forever taking place in the different autonomous regions. The professionals and businessmen who operate within the Spanish market have to make an enormous effort to keep themselves up to date.

The implementation of the present anti-smoking law in Spain, approved in 2005, has been very irregular. The Madrid autonomous government, without going any further, approved in November 2006 a much more permissive decree than that prescribed by the law which, among other things, allows smoking in the bars at the workplace and eliminates the necessity to physically separate the smoking areas in premises of more than 100 square meters.

On December 28, 2009, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed amended legislation that increases how many coin-operated games may be placed in the city’s public locations without an arcade license. Officials from the Amusement and Music Owners Association of New York (AMOA-NY) joined the mayor in the official signing. The threshold of game placements rises from four to nine. An arcade license is required for locating 10 or more games at a single site.

The AMOA has announced its dates for the start of its 2010 Notre Dame Management Development Program on the South Bend, Indiana campus. The next Masters II class begins with courses set for the weekend of October 23 and 24. The standard program, Class XV’s first session, will be held from October 22 to 25. More details to be available soon.

According to a December 22, 2009 ruling from the North Carolina Court of Appeals, the state’s General Assembly’s 2006 ban on video poker is lawful. It ruled it legal despite offering the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians the right to operate gambling games on tribal land while denying that opportunity to other North Carolina citizens.

In what would seem obvious, the chairman of the Illinois Gaming Board (IGB) wants to ban operators who have been prosecuted or fined for running “gray-area” pokers from participating in Illinois’ planned legal video lottery market. He made the announcement at a December 16, 2009 meeting of the regulatory organization.

CANADA

In a case that could have wider national implications, Canada’s Loto-Quebec has reached an out-of-court settlement worth millions of dollars with problem gamblers in the province, following a class action lawsuit filed against the provincial state lottery operator nine years ago.

Source: Gaming Intelligence

The culture administrative departments of all levels in Qinghai Province cooperated with industry and commerce departments and public security departments to conduct a four-month collective culture market rectification movement focused on inspecting internet cafes, amusement and entertainment venues.  During the movement period, 14,314 law enforcement officers were mobilized to inspect 14,061 cultural entities.Twenty-five illegal operations were found and 31,862 websites and games were blocked.

During 2009, Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province has actively supported and promoted the animation and online game industry’s development and enthusiastically explored new directions for the development and management of e-game venues. 

Scheduled to take place from May 2 to 4, 2010 in Taipei City, Taiwan, the VIP exhibitor registration for GTI Asia Taipei Expo 2010 kicked off on December 30, 2009.  So far GTI, the show organizer, has confirmed the registration of the first 10 VIP exhibitors with the total booking of 200 booths (1,800sqm). 

Founded in 1992, Saint-Fun started off with the import of video game motherboards. Dedicated to developing sports leisure products, the company successfully created the Street Basketball frenzy. For the period from the second half of 2009 to the first half of 2010, Saint-Fun is focused on expanding into ODM and OEM international companies. 

Last year, the Belgian government approved a new gaming law. The Belgian Council of Ministers approved the new bill in March with the aim of streamlining the machine licensing structure in the country, which in the previous law of 1999 gave authority for licences to various different agencies.

The Dutch government introduced a new law in 2008 that threatened to make life very difficult for those working in the gaming sector. Thanks to intensive lobbying from the gaming monopoly and issues with European law, the new gambling law has not yet been passed and looks set to be put on hold indefinitely.

At this year’s EAG Sound Leisure and Soundnet will once again display a quality and diverse range of digital jukeboxes and music solutions.

Sound Leisure will unveil a major new development in digital jukebox technology at this year’s EAG show on stand 350.

Suzo-Happ, the global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of gaming and amusements products, has chosen to partner billiard cloth manufacturer Milliken at the inaugural European Amusement and Gaming (EAG) Expo in January.

Harry Levy Amusements has chosen the debut EAG Exhibition, at the Excel, to showcase its huge range of products next January.

“We are looking forward to EAG, as we have a cracking line-up of machines and know we have a great position and location to show them off on stand 440,” says Harry Levy’s Colin Mallery. “Of course, we are saving some surprises for the show itself, but here is a sneak preview of some of the great games you can expect.”

Leading machine distribution company Brent Sales will go into 2010 promoting two new product categories. The categories, which have been branded as ‘Fun With Prize’ and ‘Adrenaline Based Gaming’ represent Brent’s vision for the business over the mid-term. The Fun With Prize or FWP sector encompasses prize redemption, ticket redemption and prize every time products, with Adrenaline Based Gaming (ABG) the umbrella term for participation games which provide players with a compelling out of home experience. Both categories, together with a much greater emphasis on prize retailing and licensed products, form a central part of Brent’s major game presence at January’s debut EAG show (ExCel Centre, London 26-28 January).

There’ll be no shortage of innovation and creativity from Aristocrat Technologies when the international games developer unveils a raft of new slot games and concepts at IGE 2010. The company is planning to launch no fewer than 17 first-release Viridian™/Gen7™ titles for Europe, with at least 25 games making their maiden appearance at any EMEA trade show.

The team of wh Münzprüfer Berlin GmbH will present ist complete range of payment systems at the ATEI show.  The EMP 800 v6 coin selector with its considerable higher efficiency of coin recognition rules has proven very successful on the international markets since its launch about 2 years ago. 

JENSIgame SE is pleased to announce its debut at the forthcoming International Gaming Expo (IGE) in London. JENSIgame SE will be exhibiting on stand number 4460 in Hall 1 at Earl’s Court. JENSIgame SE will be presenting the next generation of video lottery terminals (VLT’s) called the Internet Lottery Terminal (ILT).

The GREaT Foundation, formerly known as the Responsibility in Gambling Trust, will be using January’s International Gaming Expo to promote and acknowledge the unique work undertaken by the gambling industry to help care for the small percentage of people in the UK who are classified as being ‘problem gamblers’.

APEX founder Mr. Weissengruber and his team are particularly looking forward to the world premiere at the IGE of their latest electronic table game innovation – the Quikker®.

A wide range of innovative touch solutions for gaming applications will be exhibited by Elo TouchSystems at the annual International Gaming Expo (IGE).

From a global leader in touch technology comes a new technology that has achieved the “Compatible with Windows 7” logo. IntelliTouch Plus surface acoustic wave touch technology expands the industry-leading Elo TouchSystems portfolio by giving OEMs, application developers and customers new tools to leverage the distinct advantages of the Windows 7 touch interface.

At ATEI 2010 COMPUMATIC will launch the new Dart Machine VIRTUALDART, developed with state of the art technology. 

A 19” screen gives all the necessary information like instructions, game options, details during the games, ranking lists and sport related activities under dartserver.com.

Stand 3340 at London’s 2010 International Gaming Expo will reflect Astro Corp’s increasing presence on the international gaming scene.

The company will be showcasing 25 single and dual screen games targeted at Asia, Latin America, Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Also on show will be Cronus Roulette a highly flexible Multiplayer roulette system based on a  46” LCD Touchscreen layout.

Following a truly successful G2E, Innocore Gaming is anticipating a similar experience at IGE 2010. The combination of an impressive number of new design-wins and a ongoing improvement of the market have had a very positive effect and caused the company’s phenomenal growth in 2009.

Since it was first launched the Ardac Elite has been a market leader in bill acceptors.  Now, with the addition of EASITRAX® Soft Count compatibility the Elite offers even more benefits to customers.  Launched at G2E in November, UK and European customers will get the first chance to this integrated system when it is demonstrated at this year’s IGE at Earls Court.  

Stand 5110 at IGE 2010 will see the launch of Plus-Five Gaming, a Maltese licensed  company offering full-service “white label” online and mobile gaming solutions.

Crane Payment Solutions will showcase NRI & CashCode innovations for Casino Gaming and AWP Markets at the 2010 IGE/ATEI exhibition in London on stand 3232, Hall 2.

AWP operators will be pleased to see the debut of NRI’s highly anticipated next generation G-40 coin validator.  This product will leverage G-40’s highly reliable proven architecture yet re-set the coin validation standard with its best in class Multi Frequency Technology (MFT).

Launching in London will be MD’s new platform that will boost both MD and operators business.  Brand new Multireel Games, Brand new Jackpot, Brand new Roulette, but overall a Brand new Platform: the show has just begun.

Suzo Happ will be distributing the new Gaming catalogue at this year’s IGE in London on stand number 4240 in Hall 1. The catalogue reflects the strength-in-depth of the Suzo Happ product range. The new Suzo Happ Gaming Catalogue has grown by over sixty pages, covering over 220 pages in total. The catalogue will be available in English and German.

At IGE 2010, JCM Global will be showing three revolutionary new products in stand #4260: the iVIZION™ bill validator, the new TBV™ transactional bill validator and the Sentry 2.0™ bezel. Additionally, JCM will be showing its UBA® Universal Bill Acceptor, ICB™ Intelligent Cash Box, Vega™ bill validator and Taiko (Pub 7/11) bill validator.

Under the successfully established umbrella brand, Games Unlimited, the company will introduce its new country-specified game packages. “We are sure that among the great variety of our games every player can find his favourite one,” states Frank Ziegler, Director Sales and Marketing at MERKUR GAMING.

The SMART Way from Innovative Technology is a revolutionary new way to pay in and out mixed notes and to pay out mixed coins.

From stand 4350 at the IGE - International Gaming Expo (January 2010) The SMART Way will be demonstrated to the gaming and amusement industry’s elite. Innovative Technology are inviting all operators and machine manufacturers to our stand to see for themselves the combined ability of the SMART Hopper and the SMART  Payout with the NV200.

Amatic Industries from Austria can be found on number 3060 in a prominent position reflecting its status within the industry.

Multi Game EVOLUTION PRO symbolises what Amatic Industries stands for. It is the multi game concept that has seen Amatic Industries grow to become a major industry player. This year Amatic Industries is placing particular focus on the Multi Game EVOLUTION PRO.