Macau market ripe for new player-friendly slot rewards tech: Acres Manufacturing

Macau is going to be an “emerging market for slots” as growth in high-end table play moderates and demand in the latter segment matures, suggests United States gaming technology entrepreneur John Acres, in comments to GGRAsia. To build on and support that potential, Macau can benefit from a next-generation slot video screen manager offering “real-time customer engagement,” Mr Acres (pictured) stated. He is founder of Las Vegas, Nevada-based Acres Manufacturing Co. The business, started in 2007, was recently gazetted as a gaming machine manufacturer approved by the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ) for the Macau market. For the April to June period, Macau’s slot gross gaming revenue (GGR) was 6.7 percent of all casino revenue, up from 5.6 percent a year earlier, according to gaming bureau market-segment data issued recently. That was notwithstanding the 12,000-unit cap on the number of electronic gaming machines (EGMs) permitted in Macau. A key Acres Manufacturing product eyed for the Macau slot market, and offering that “real-time customer engagement”, is “Foundation”, the entrepreneur said. The digital technology connects directly to slot machines to provide real-time play data and control of the credit meter, enabling modern applications like cashless gaming and customised bonuses. The software-application element of Foundation is already “data gathering” on over 40,000 slot machines in the United States, having been launched in 2021, Mr Acres noted. But a “brand-new” element – which he says can greatly support the Macau market – is a video overlay that won’t be introduced until the start of next year, and which can be used to interact with players to create an “emotional” connection for the purposes of player rewards. The company calls it ‘ScreeM’, meaning a screen manager that offers a video overlay on each slot machine, and which can be used for new levels of engagement with the player. It will be launched at the time of Global Gaming Expo (G2E) 2026 in Las Vegas later this month, and should be available for shipping in early 2027. Screen manager “We think of ScreeM as a ‘real-time customer engagement’ capability that allows personalised audio-video interactions with players based upon their personality, preferences and current play experiences,” explained Mr Acres. ScreeM has the capability to present side bets, allow players to watch sporting events, support drink orders, process jackpots, enable cashless wagering, and provide virtual host – or ‘vost’ – services. The technology “can work on any machine that’s in Macau,” including electronic table games, and can be added according to the preferences of venue operators. “We can enhance the value of those games without having to replace those games,” noted Mr Acres. He said other slot machine systems “only evaluate a player about once an hour,” and typically “don’t do anything” with the information even then. Mr Acres stated: “It waits until the end of the day to say, ‘Oh, the player theoretically lost 300 dollars. What should we send him or her to invite them back?’ “We want to be doing that in the moment. Our system can respond within a half a second of the time” that a player makes a particular choice, he added. “We make a new kind of display that overlays on the game video screen” with the company’s “virtual host, and all the offers” that the firm can make, Mr Acres observed. “We can also play through the audio of the game so that our characters can speak to the player.” It can work on “any game that has one or more video screens,” and will, Mr Acres suggested, help bridge the consumer-personalisation gap that currently exists in much casino technology, compared to smartphone applications. “The mobile phone is continuously giving variety of content and deep, deep, immediate personalisation” to users, Mr Acres told GGRAsia. By contrast, “the gaming industry is far behind in that,” he stated. “We want to make up that difference.” Acres Manufacturing has chosen not to offer facial recognition capability with its video screen manager – even on an anonymised basis – as has been used by some casino equipment manufacturers. “Cards and the other identification systems that we already have in the casinos” are able to create the link to players to offer the personalisation, suggested the entrepreneur. Slot machine facial recognition “is difficult to implement because how do I know when the player that’s at the machine is in the frame?”, Mr Acres stated. “Do I get lost on seeing someone that’s walking behind in the background because the real player’s leaned over to the side?” Creating feelgood Nonetheless, he asserts that Foundation’s ScreeM setup can create the right feelgood factor for players. He explained: “We believe that the casinos pay way too much attention to the fiscal rewards they give to the players and not nearly enough attention to the emotional rewards.” Examples of the latter included, via a video overlay – or even via connection to a slot machine’s sound system – “giving you a cheer, a recommendation or an acknowledgement”. Mr Acres asserted such an approach “costs the casino nothing and means more to the player than 10-dollars-worth of free play”. The entrepreneur stated: “We want to help casinos make real-time engagements with their players as they’re on the machine. “All the loyalty systems we [as an industry] have used in the past evaluate how much you spent, or how much you theoretically lost, on a given visit to the casino. Then they [the operator] send you an invitation to come back with an amount of free play.” By contrast, the latest version of Foundation has what the company calls “virtual hosts that appear on the screen,” and that can “throw you a bonus right then”. The virtual hosts “talk to you, they engage with you, they cheer you on”. They can even, said Mr Acres, “tell you your horoscopes”. The industry “can’t afford to put a human host on every player… but we want to bring the virtual host to the… the mass market and the premium-mass market player in a way that they find engaging, entertaining, and fulfilling.” Mr Acres explained he has a longstanding engagement with the business concept of player loyalty. Another business he founded, Acres Gaming, developed a casino management system called Acres Advantage. According to Acres Manufacturing’s website, Acres Gaming was sold to the legacy gaming technology business IGT in 2003, with Acres Advantage then evolving into what is now known as IGT Advantage. Mr Acres told GGRAsia: “The casino always has to have that house edge. That means the casino will almost always win money from the player. “The challenge is, how do I keep that player coming back? Our solution is to always make the player feel like a winner even when they’re losing.”