Our new Controller - Hooray! ...But more compliance changes - oh no!

2007... A milestone year for NZ Rugby and an even bigger milestone year for Fortune. It's the Rugby World Cup year and so the team at Fortune decided to celebrate this by designing some stunning commemorative artwork to adorn the front of the new Fortune Jackpot Controller.

The new artwork depicts our own silver fern on a black background with some touches of gold.... hopefully a positive golden omen of the trophy that hopefully will come our way!

The World Cup comes around every four years but it has been TEN YEARS since Fortune released the original jackpot controller that has faithfully and reliably served our clients, venues and players so well. The release of this new controller is therefore a very significant milestone for Fortune and our clients.

Apart from the nostalgia aspect there are some very important other aspects of the new controller release that our clients should be aware of for their future planning and budgeting;

The new 'Gambling Act' introduced a raft of new measures that have had significant operational and financial impact on gaming machine trusts and venues in New Zealand. These control measures have placed restrictions on the way gaming machines operate (capping machine numbers, lowered note input values, venue visibility conditions etc.) as well as the extremely contentious harm minimisation/problem gambling measures (mandated industry funding for problem gambling services, pop-up displays, game timeouts etc.)

All of our clients are aware of these measures now and most of them have already introduced or cost budgeted for them in the short term future. What however is not widely known or appreciated is the effect that the new Gambling Act will have on future jackpot operations and this is considerable!

The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) has determined that under the new Act all jackpot prize payouts must be downloaded to the machines and no direct hand-pays from the jackpot controller will be permitted. Currently the majority of systems operating in NZ have direct hand-pays for jackpot prizes won by players. The logic of downloading prizes to the machines is essentially twofold;

1. If all jackpot prizes are downloaded onto the gaming machines then these can be simply collected by the EMS as part of the packet of meter data extracted from each machine everyday by the EMS controller. This process would therefore eliminate the need for the EMS controller to be connected to the jackpot controller to collect jackpot prize values. This method of collecting all data from the single source of the gaming machine softmeters is the most efficient method for the EMS because in the past connecting to the various jackpot controllers in the market has been problematic for a variety of reasons.

2. The new Gambling Act specifies that the 'pop-up' displays must accurately display all of the player's gambling statistics during the period of their play. This therefore must include any/all jackpot prizes won during that play period if the pop-up data is to be 100% accurate as the Act determines. Jackpot prizes are invariably large dollar value prizes and therefore these could have a significant effect/distortion on the accuracy of the data displayed to the player. Under the existing manual hand-pay system for jackpot prizes there is no way this prize value data can be collected or displayed as part of the pop-up gambling statistics. The only solution to this is that jackpot prizes must be downloaded to the gaming machine meter package for the gambling statistics to access and display these.

The bottom line is that the concept of player data pop-ups will not only have a major cost and operational impact onto gaming machine software but will also have a huge trickle down impact to the majority of jackpot systems operating in this market.

The other significant factor in this matter is the fact that under the Gambling Act all of these changes have to implemented by 2009! This timeframe is imposed as part of the pop-up implementation program.

Fortune has expressed concern to the DIA about this very short timeframe and the simple practical commercial reality of being able to achieve what needs to be done in the marketplace with the limited lead time of less than two years.

This condensed timeframe is further compounded by the fact that the new jackpot standards document that contains all of the specifications required by jackpot suppliers for the new downloadable systems has yet to be released by the DIA. This document was originally scheduled for release in late 2006 and although there has been several release dates quoted during this year, at present we still do not have a new jackpot standards document available for industry consultation... very frustrating!

Fortune has however taken the initiative and prepared wherever possible as much as we possibly can. We already have our new controller platform manufactured, approved and currently being distributed into all new installations. This controller is an updated version of our old controller, but has been redesigned utilising modern more powerful and faster componentry.

More importantly though, is the fact that the new controller has been designed to be download compatible with all gaming machines allowing jackpot prizes to be dropped onto the machine meters in compliance with the new operation requirements.

Fortune has already designed and written the new software for a downloadable format system. This new base software can only be released after the new jackpot standards specification document has been signed off and introduced by the DIA, after which Fortune can submit the new software for testing laboratory certification and operational approval.

Fortune has therefore been as proactive as we can be by preparing as much possible in advance to ensure both our clients and their venues will be ready and operationally compliant to the new jackpot regime provisions that we know will impact onto our industry in the short term future.

Costings for the new controller compliance system requirements cannot yet be finalised until after the jackpot standards documents have been adopted for implementation by the DIA; But, all Trusts, Societies and Clubs should be forecast budgeting for the not inconsiderable costs that will be involved in updating each venue's jackpot systems and software to comply with the new downloadable requirements.