Indian Gaming Exclusive - “We revealed the new O-Circle cabinet at G2E this year. The world is not flat – the world is a curve – and so there’s a curved cabinet now. The player actually becomes immersed into the game because it wraps around over top of the player. We’re very excited about that.

We’re also starting to see what we’re calling the Ortiz standard catch on around the country, especially in Indian Country. This Ortiz standard has existed in 22 countries and essentially is a different way of thinking about slot floors. For instance, if you put a normal machine on a slot floor, for the first couple of months it’s going to out-perform everything else on the floor because everybody wants to go see the new bells and whistles.

Then after 60-90-120 days, it’ll drop down to the floor average, and if it stays at the floor average, then you keep that game on your floor and that’s good. If it drops below the floor average, then you call the salesman and say ‘send me a new game.’ What has happened in 22 countries for Ortiz, and now we’re seeing it in Indian Country, is the Ortiz games start out below the floor average, and as the players start to understand the magic of the Ortiz math, the games climb up after 60-90 days, to the floor average. Then, they climb to a measurable multiple 2, 3, 4, even 6 times the floor average and they stay there for years. That’s the Ortiz standard.

What’s so important and exciting is it requires a rethinking of the metrics of your slot floor.

“We revealed the new O-Circle cabinet at G2E this year. The world is not flat – the world is a curve – and so there’s a curved cabinet now. The player actually becomes immersed into the game because it wraps around over top of the player. We’re very excited about that.

A couple of years ago, I asked one of the operators in Mexico, ‘Tell me the worst thing about the Ortiz games because I really need to know and you’ve had them on your floor for five years.’ He said, ‘The problem I have with these games is a big problem. I have to do emergency drops four and five times a day because the cash box will only hold so much money and I have to have a crew standing by to pull the money out of these games.’ He wasn’t a salesman and he wasn’t trying to sell me on the game. That was really his problem. I like that problem.

Alejandro Ortiz, often says, ‘We’re building a new history.’ And we really are. As I’ve talked about this Ortiz standard – as this becomes more and more adopted across casino floors, we’re going to see that standard become the standard for a gaming floor.

In the future, what you’re going to see are a couple of very exciting things for Ortiz. We anticipate being the majority game on the floor in the next few years. Starting in 2015, 2016, we expect the Ortiz games to become the dominant game on the floor. We also expect other operators to start mimicking what the Ortiz games do because that’s where our industry is and that’s not a bad thing. In fact, we welcome the industry embracing the Ortiz standard because it means a lot more money for the operators.”