BEST NEW GAME OPTIONS IF YOU ARE BUYING NOW FOR THE CHRISTMAS BUILD-UP.

Many of the new games featured by manufacturers at the AGE Show in mid-August are still just getting through the government approval process and being gradually shipped out into clubs and hotels. This is the best time of the year to purchase machines because you get the benefit of the increased turnover (and therefore, net profit results) in the run-up to Christmas. This means the time to pay them off is shorter at this time of year.

With the performance results now firming up as the new games hit the market in numbers, it’s time for a quick look at a few of the purchase options:

Aristocrat

For Aristocrat any of the Lightning Cash (or Lightning Link) games are a first choice purchase followed by some of their Player’s Choice games: Lightning Cash/Link – Happy Lantern, Sahara Gold, High Stakes and Magic Pearl in that order have been very successful for months. The new game ‘Moon Race’ which has only been in the market for a few weeks, but in some numbers is currently outranking all these earlier games.

Players Choice – ‘Diamond’ and ‘Sapphire’ are still currently the strongest in both clubs and pubs. While most venues have ‘Sapphire’ installed in a new Helix machine, it will also go into a Viridian WS cabinet, so this might give you a way to add this game into a Viridian WS that needs a conversion, and use the Helix machine to add in a Lightning Cash game.  If you have lots of high end players you need a ‘Players Choice- High Limits’, particularly in a pub or large club.

Their new Gold Case games, ‘Dragons Choice’, ‘Globetrotter’ and ‘The Big 5’ are in the market in small numbers. I would stick to the first two so far based on the results as they are ranking around the level of many of the older Players Choice games and a little below the Lightning Cash games.

IGT

Many of the new games for their Crystal Dual-i are out now in some numbers. The standouts so far, and best choice for a machine purchase are ‘Temple of the Sun’, which is slightly better than ‘Temple of the Moon’ and ‘Kingdom of the Crystal Mountains’. All three are sitting, on average, a little below Aristocrats Lightning Cash games but above many of the ‘Players Choice’ games. They have a large number of new games coming through the approval system over the coming months and these new games are worth purchasing as they only come in the new machine and have some on your floor gives you access to all the new games as they are released.

Scientific Games

Many of SG’s new games have been very popular with the games designed for their new cabinet the standouts so far. ‘Blazing Dragons’ has been very strong since its release and sits probably just below the best of the IGT games but ‘Dancing in Rio’ has been really popular with the game play overlaid on essentially a second set of reels giving the players the perception of playing two games at once (two chance to win) with each spin. This game so far is ranking among the aristocrat Lighting Cash games and well worth purchasing in the new machine.

AGT

AGT have had to wait the longest for new games to be approved, but several are working their way into many venues now. So far their leading game on performance has been the ‘Double Shot – King Spin’ games and these are also up around the best new IGT and SHFL games. There are three of these game packs available that each have a different group of games, with SAP levels on top for the players to chase.  Their ‘Adventure Cash’ range has only just been released so the performance results are new but the three games in the range ‘Robinson Crusoe’, ‘Huckleberry Finn’ and ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ are ranking just below the Double Shot King Spin games.

Konami

Their tall top Jackpots games such as ‘Lucky O’Leary’, ‘Pharaoh’s Fury jackpots” and ‘Dragon Dynasty Jackpots’ are the best options for a new game purchase and all suit your smaller day players who  come to the club regularly. For a great conversion game ‘Frogger’ has been going in everywhere and is working quite well.