September 25, 2007
One-armed and internet-ready
Q: Where can you find 1m screens, at the heart of a multi-billion-dollar industry, that are just waiting to be connected to the internet?
A: Las Vegas, Atlantic City and anywhere else that players of the slots congregate.
WMS (a public company founded more than half a century ago by Harry Williams, whose main claim to fame was inventing the "tilt" mechanism in pinball machines) showed off an intriguing hybrid slot machine today that could bring social networking to the one-armed bandit.
The trick will lie in marrying two completely different experiences. Devotees of the slots have an innate suspicion of digital technology: they prefer to trust a purely mechanical system that pits man against machine. WMS’s idea is to overlay another, transparent screen on top of the slots window that adds a layer of 3D graphics and interactivity to the experience, without actually replacing it.
Using this, WMS is working on ideas for creating multiplayer games, or identifying individual players so that casinos can pitch offers directly to them. Can a Facebook for like-minded arm-crankers be far behind?
