Ben Boehman goes under the hood of electronic slot machines.
Electronic slot machines are an important revenue tool for most gambling institutions.
They offer a unique combination of wagering and entertainment that appeals to the masses. Despite higher payouts, the sheer volume of play typically yields a majority contribution to the bottom line of any casino.
Despite their importance, many gaming operators don’t seem to put adequate thought into the hardware that goes into these embedded systems and how it can affect their business. The truth is that what is under the hood of these machines does matter, possibly in ways you wouldn’t expect.
The first thing a successful electronic slot machine must deliver on is entertainment. The game’s content will be the first and most important factor in a machine’s success. However, while enjoyable game-play is important to keep players engaged longer, eye-catching graphics are what draw players to a machine in the first place.
Today’s consumers are surrounded by high-definition multimedia in their daily lives and expect no less from their casino gaming experiences. High-end electronic slot machines need high-performance components to power today’s immersive, 3D graphics-intensive games.
The system’s GPU (graphics processing unit) is the engine that makes this possible. Every gaming system with a display has some kind of GPU. Machines with low to moderately complex graphics may use integrated graphics units, where the GPU is combined with the CPU (central processing unit) on a single silicon-based microchip.
Read the full article in the October issue of InterGaming.
