One day, you see a particular game on a machine. The next visit, that same machine is there, but now suddenly the game is different. A player was curious about the process:
Can the casino swap out something inside the machine to change it or do they have to physically move every machine when changing it to a different kind?
Debbie G.
The analogy based on the examples we’ve seen is akin to something similar to a video game system with cartridges or a digital camera with a media card for storage.
Slot machines often have (we can’t say it’s universal but the examples we’ve been shown work this way) two key software elements – the OS, which is the base system that everything else needs to run on, and then the game software.
Generally each of those is stored on a read-only chip, a step that ensures the software isn’t tampered with, and are each optimized for the particular machine it’s on. It also makes for the easiest of updating since you can just swap out a chip when needed.
So, if a particular game is no longer working out for a casino, the casino can order a different game to go on the same cabinet. When the casino owns the cabinet, they can acquire other games that can play on that cabinet. When it’s leased, they can work with the manufacturer to bring in another game that’s doing well elsewhere or will have a chance to succeed at that casino.
This isn’t universal. For instance, slots that have mechanical reels may still need new reel strips. Older machines may have backlist glass instead of a screen that needs to be swapped out. Some of the displays that even the leased games have might have physical branding that needs to be replaced when the game is swapped.
But in the modern computerized era, it’s certainly a simpler process for swapping out a game than the era when all the pay was shown on a piece of glass, where switching out the game means switching out the glass and other components as well.
The nice thing about that is a machine doesn’t have to be moved to be updated. Game makers have certainly invested a lot of time and research figuring out the best way to optimize maintenance of a machine, including the ability to switch out the game when it’s time.
Making this process simpler reduces the labor hours of keeping a casino floor fresh, and is likely one reason why we see games updated more frequerntly than they would have been 10 or 20 years ago.
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