Following our news last week that slot machine manufacturer Aristocrat has completed a US$500m acquisition of online software developer Plarium from Israel, Aristocrat’s CEO Trevor Croker has gone on record as identifying a subtle change in the company’s philosophy.
He told The Australian Financial Review: “I think if we had been told four or five years ago that we would be looking at digital space, I'm not sure we would have believed it. But now we consider ourselves a technology company, not a manufacturing company, we have a lot more software engineers and coders building things in the digital space than we would have manufacturing engineers, for example.”
Plarium is a major developer of digital strategy games, including the well-known Vikings: War of Clans. Croker said that digital sources would grow to 22 per cent of Aristocrat’s total revenue and that the company would continue to pursue fresh agreements on digital business.
Plarium CEO Avraham Shatel will continue to lead the company together with 12 members of his management team. The company has 1200 employees in offices in Europe, Israel and the US.
