G2E Asia Hits Macau
The largest gaming industry event in Asia opened on Wednesday at the Venetian Macao. It was held in an exhibition hall, and no surprises what it looked like…
a casino floor
The 150 exhibitors were hawking all sorts of products, ranging from automatic card shufflers to robotic card dealers and portable gambling sets (kinda like a PSP). But the most shiny and prominent toys had to be the slot machines.
Not that they weren’t exciting. We were oohing and ahhhing over Star Wars and Indiana Jones. The shiny new machines looked more like video games or pinball machines rather than your typical run of the mill pokies machine.
The folks behind the Star Wars version even brought in some Storm Troopers and Darth Vader himself to spice things up. There might not have been hot models like you find in car shows, but it was amusing to see all the folk in suits queuing up to take a photo with Mr Vader himself. For a minute I felt like I was in a theme park, rather than a serious gaming industry event. Guess, it’s all about playing, and adults are just kids at heart.
One other thing that caught my eye was the robotic croupier. Don’t get excited – they aren’t dapper Jude Law droid similar to the version in A.I. Called “Robotic-arc type” and manufactured by Bingo Times, a Taiwanese company, it’s just a white robotic arm with a metallic pincer and suction cap at the end to pick up and show the cards.
So much for personality. These guys deal out hands for Black Jack, Poker, Mahjong and a bunch of other games – simply press a button and switch the mode.
So what is the difference between having a robotic dealer compared to a human one? The vendor looked at me like I had asked him a stupid question that didn’t deserve an answer so I hazarded a guess.
“It works out cheaper in the long run huh?”
To which the vendor responded with a nod – yes.
My next obvious question – so, how much does one of these fellas cost, and where are they being used at the moment?
The answer? Cambodian casinos, and about US$100,000 per pop.
According to CNN, the average wage of a Cambodian is US$350 a year. Which means that a human Cambodian Croupier would have to work about 285 years before making up the cost of a robotic croupier. Although I’d minus off a bit for the cost of long service awards every 50 years or so.
Another booth run by Cantor Gaming showed off mobile gaming options. For hotel guests who simply can’t tear themselves away from the casino floor, they can now have the convenience of playing wherever they are using a handheld device called an eDeck – which is either a tablet PC or PDA. Guests can use the eDeck to log in to their own account to play Baccarat, Roulette and Black Jack anytime and almost anywhere. The device is linked by a wi-fi network to a casino server and the location of the device monitored through the wireless access points on the casino grounds. After you check out, you return the device and settle your bill – just like you would for the mini bar.
They also showed personalized consoles – similar to those seen on massage chairs and airplanes. According to Cantor, these are designed to be used in public areas of the casino – “including the pool deck, bars and convention centers… excluding parking facilities”.
So obviously it’s okay to be gambling in the midst of applying your suntan lotion out by the pool, or sipping a martini at the bar or pretending to take notes at a convention. But you’ve obviously got a problem if you’re itching to place your bet while parking your car.
Leave a Reply