A New Model of Product Development for Secure Interactive Clients such as Slot Machines and Other Gaming Equipment

New features of embedded motherboards can meet manufacturers’ need for security and authentication while reducing system cost and accelerating time-to-market.

The market for secure interactive clients such as electronic gaming equipment, of which the prime example is the slot machine, is experiencing a period of considerable change. The change is driven by deregulation and an upsurge in gaming participation in less economically developed countries accompanied by a tightening in consumer spending in more economically developed countries. This in turn has led to the emergence of new equipment manufacturers challenging the position of long-established incumbent suppliers.

This change is causing disruption to the gaming equipment market at many levels:

• In relationships with casinos and other key gaming equipment customers
• In consumers’ expectations of their interactions with gaming equipment
• In the gaming equipment industry’s relationship with its supply chain

In other words, the gaming equipment industry is entering a new phase in which competition becomes more widespread and intense. In this environment, those manufacturers who can adapt quickly to consumer demands with accelerated product introduction schedules, and add new, desirable features while restraining product costs, are the companies most likely to survive in the long term.

This eBook presents a way for gaming equipment manufacturers to raise their competitiveness by making a strategic change to their implementation of the core computing engine at the heart of every electronic gaming device: today these are typically based on proprietary computer boards (either as full custom boards or as proprietary carrier boards hosting standard computer-on-module mezzanine cards).

In the future, successful manufacturers will take full advantage of existing high-performance embedded motherboards available off the shelf.

These motherboards will enable manufacturers to bring new products to market more quickly, at a lower development cost and using the latest technology, while channeling internal development resources to their real source of competitive advantage: enhancing the consumer experience of using the machine.