After attending G2E Vegas 2015 its clear slot brands remain a huge part of the industry, with slot developing giants such as Scientific Games hosting Homer and Marge Simpson characters, rapstar Pitbull, Playboy Bunnies and Cirque Du Soleil performers and other developers showcasing brands such as Orange is the New Black, House of Cards, Ted 2 and countless others crawling all over the expo floor. Skill-based slots are even in the early stages of development, but we haven’t had any real innovation in slots until now.
Several weeks ago Colossus Bets announced the launch of a partial cash-out slot, the Colossus Fracpot game, developed by CORE Gaming and now for play on Sky Vegas. To learn more, while at G2E Vegas I caught up with Tony Plaskow who was representing Colossus Bets in founder & CEO Bernard Marantelli’s absence and CEO of CORE Gaming Justin Chamberlain who was unable to make G2E last minute but came to London shortly thereafter for an interview.
“Colossus Bets has worked with CORE Gaming to build a feature into a game that’s just gone live on Sky Vegas and the feature is called ‘Fracpot’, so it’s a fractional jackpot, basically”, Plaskow explained.
Chamberlain added, “Colossus Bets allows their punters to cash out their bet half way through or at any stage in their pool betting and Bernard wanted to see that technology and that IP brought into slots as a new innovation”.
While branded slots have always dominated real estate on casino floors, at G2E, other industry trade shows and driven the majority of revenue for Western-facing online gambling sites, the industry has not seen any real innovation in slots for quite some time.
“Everyone claims innovation and most innovation is typically new free spin rounds or pick me bonuses”, Chamberlain said. “Innovation is still on the ground and has been for many years, people have tried to lead innovation with brands, so the brand battle has been had and no one’s come out a winner in that, so this is an innovative product because it’s a first to market”.
Plaskow went on to explain exactly how the Colossus Fracpot works on the Sky Vegas website, a concept that has been well-received by consumers and operators so far.
“[Fracpot] basically allows the player to take a part of a win and they can then gamble the rest of that win and try and win a big jackpot along the way, so you can bank some money and you can move on with the rest of your bet”, Plakcow explained. “So it’s a pretty straight forward concept, but its something that hasn’t really been done before”.
Chamberlain added, “The concept was originally sponsored by Sky Vegas, we took it to them about eight months ago, they loved it straight away, they sponsored it, we’ve developed the game, we’ve launched it, its been live two weeks and its doing fantastic numbers from the number of players to the bet volumes that are going through it. We’ve actually already sold the product already- or pre-sold it- to every other operator we can reach in the space”.
[video2 filename=”jc-innovation-in-slots-colossus-bets-core-gaming-launch-partial-cash-out-fracpot-bl-video” width=”653″ height=”357″ screenshot=”https://calvinayre.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/jc-innovation-in-slots-colossus-bets-core-gaming-launch-partial-cash-out-fracpot-bl-video3.jpg” 720p=”tp-innovation-in-slots-colossus-bets-core-gaming-launch-partial-cash-out-fracpot-bl-720-video” adtime=”0″ /]
“The operators get it, they’re very excited about it”, confirmed Plakcow.
The future is certainly looking bright for the Colossus/CORE Gaming partial cash-out concept and Chamberlain confirmed there are additional games in the pipeline we can expect to see in early 2016.
“We’re already working on a Fracpot warrior game which is the second Fracpot game with William Hill, we are working on a Fracpot free spins game for Sky with Colossus again and we’re working on a Fracpot progressive game with Colossus where we’re going to bring a new game to market- same mechanics, same IP, same technology- but with progressive jackpots, with a guaranteed minimum ten million pound prize jackpot”.
