Comma 6a+, a new set of regulations that will require the replacement of thousands of gaming machines in Italy, has yet to come into effect, much to the frustration of the industry.
“What we’re finding is obviously customers are nervous about the fact that the law hasn’t come through yet and they don’t want to start investing in new machines and new equipment until then,” said Jon Jayal of gaming platform developer Quixant.
His company’s latest platform, the QXi-306, has been designed to comply with Comma 6a+, using the very latest AMD x 86 technologies. Speaking to InterGame at the ENADA Rome show on Thursday, Jayal explained that the new product is “upwards compatible,” meaning machine manufacturers can build a machine that is compliant with the draft specifications for Comma 6a+, but for now include a game based on the existing Comma 6a regulations.
“If they’re using the 306 then the hardware is upwardly compatible with the new law,” he said. “That’s partly why we’ve had more interest in new gaming platforms than in the past. It’s taken so long for this to come through that people are saying they have to do something and maybe that’s a route that can get machines deployed and still not have a massive upgrade cost when the new law comes in.”
Quixant’s Italian operation is a “multi-purpose” one, he said. “Clearly Italy has a lot of machines so from a sales perspective it is an attractive market, but actually our Italy operation is an engineering and support function.”
The company has a large R&D team based in Italy, which supports customers across the globe.
“From a market perspective, Italy is something we’ve known we’ve needed a presence in order to be able to access the customers here, but equally we also run our R&D for the rest of the group here,” Jayal said. “Our growth as a company overall hasn’t really been affected by the Italian regulation but obviously we want to make sure that we benefit from that regulation in the local market when it comes in. We hope it will contribute to our growth in the future.”
