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The transcription discusses the ninth annual Post-G2E Brief event where key gaming operators share their thoughts on the show, trends, likes, and dislikes. The panelists include Dan Cherry, Jordan Witten, and Randy Simpson, offering diverse perspectives from regional, local, tribal, and destination markets. They discuss improvements in gaming content, hardware, software, sound, and signage at the show. Overall, they express excitement about the innovative games and advancements showcased at the event. All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to our ninth annual Post-G2E Brief. This is an event we host here every year at EKG, and the idea is we interview some key gaming operators on their thoughts of the show, what they like, what they didn't like, any key takeaways, trends. We have a really nice panelist for you guys today. We have Dan Cherry, President of BC Gaming Consulting, Jordan Witten, Executive Director of Slot Strategy at M Resorts International, and we have Randy Simpson, Slot Manager at Prairie Band Casino and Resort. So we have a nice wide set, diverse set of operator perspectives here. We have regional, we have locals, we have tribal, and we have destination markets in Las Vegas Strip. So really nice guests for you guys here today, and thank you guys for being on here today. There will be a recording of this call. We'll send that out shortly after this call, either later today or tomorrow. There's also a Q&A function enabled in this call, so I'll be checking that. So fire away any questions, and we'll try to get to them. So we're going to dive into the specifics and details of games and cabinets, but at a very high level, let's just sort of start off with what you guys thought of the show this year. Dan, did you want to sort of kick off your thoughts of the show this year? Morning, Brendan. Thanks for having me back. It's great to be here. You know, for me going in, I was hearing from a lot of people that they really weren't sure what they were going to see, and even coming out of it, like there's not really one clear consensus. And I've been hearing some comments that people, some people were actually a little underwhelmed, but for me, it was actually kind of the opposite. The show floor is bigger, there's more, you know, iGaming suppliers, sports betting suppliers that grew the floor. But it's a really interesting show, because it seems like everybody's up their game, right? It's all evolution, not revolution. And I think some of that disappointment is coming from, like, there's no one big next thing that's obvious that's a game changer, but I was just really impressed. You got so many suppliers that are in various states of transition, whether it's, you know, market changes with aristocrats, IGT, whether it's, you know, takeover or funding transactions with new ownership with AGS, with Gaming Arts and Mercure, with Apollo and Every and IGT. So I went in really excited to see kind of how everybody was going to approach it, and I was impressed that, you know, the big three always deliver, obviously IGT and Every, it was exciting just to see that giant booth come together in such a short amount of time. And as you go to, you know, what you think of tier two and tier three suppliers, everybody's just upping their game in terms of being able to move from fast follow really to faster follow. Now, the hardware is getting better, I think the gap, you know, in terms of aristocrats who's still on the top of the mountain and everyone else is getting smaller and smaller and everybody's kicking them on their toes in terms of putting more money into R&D and game design and having really exciting hardware and having mechanics. I thought that the sound and the light and the signage is really taking a step up. So I'm interested in hearing what Jordan and Randy have to say, because I think everybody's takeaways could be pretty different, but I was just impressed that big supplier, small supplier, everybody's improving content on both hardware and software side. Sounds great. Jordan, your thoughts? Yeah, ironically, following Dan, he just about said word for word what I was going to originally say, so I'll try to say it in a slightly different way. Going into the show, kind of after the pre-G2E meetings, I kind of anticipated the show being a little bit, what I would say boring, but boring in a good way, meaning the last few years, what we have seen work is take known mechanics, make them slightly different, up the artwork a little bit, put a little bit of research into the math, try to do it slightly better and launch games that way. Those have been the successful ones. It's all the family games, it's the games following something else, they're building off of what came before them, right? And as I walked the show, I literally took notes for this meeting and every single vendor had at least one game that I thought cleverly took something that already worked in the market and brought it forward in a new way, in a new package, and I loved that. I would say it's kind of derivative, it's boring, right, those are the phrases you may think of as you walk the show when you look at a lot of this stuff, but it's in a unique package and it's a tried and true method, right, which is, yes, there's a few things and I'm sure we'll hit on a few kind of new ideas, some things changing and trying to do new mechanics, that's awesome, but that stuff a lot of times doesn't hit with players because they don't quite know what they are, right, they don't quite understand how that mechanic works and nobody wants to lose their money playing a game where they don't understand what's happening, so the leveraging of that, I would say, and again, we're going to go through some of these vendors specifically, but I was really excited to see basically every single vendor that we do business with had something that I was excited about as just a build on from something before, and a lot of copycats, right, a lot of people stealing each other's mechanics, a lot of stuff like, hey, this is like that game that this other vendor has, and my ears perk up because I go, that other game works, that other game is great, and then you get to see the different slants of art. I would also say what really excited me on top of that is the artwork itself was much better, and Dan hit on this, right, a little bit with the upping your game statement he made, 100% agree, I get so frustrated with games that look boring, we're in a modern era, our phones have 4K screens on them, our TVs at home have 4K screens on them, you have to create art that is engaging and has depth and has some life to it, and I was really impressed with that, I was really excited by that, and then kind of brand that, you need good signage, you need better signs, I think if you kind of go back five years ago or so, signs got really boring, they all turned into the same thing, everybody's getting the exact same sign from the same sign supplier, it was an attempt to kind of probably bring the cost down a little bit, this year, a lot more creative signs, still kind of using some of that technology that's a little bit cheaper, which we totally understand from an operator perspective, but better use of that sign, and there's a few signs in particular that I can't wait to talk about when we get into the details, but I was really excited to see that, because signage is huge, especially if you look at a lot of properties for us, in Las Vegas, we've kind of reduced our count, so getting those games to be able to spread out, it allows me to showcase those signs, and then sound, there's a lot of really good sound packages, again, a couple of notes that we'll talk about specifically, but sound, I think, is really good these days, and I think it's because a couple of vendors did fantastic sound two or three years ago, and everybody realized, oh, man, sound actually is important, so I could not have been happier with my time at the show, to be honest, I thought it was fantastic, top to bottom. Thanks, Jordan. Randy? I don't think there's much left to say after Dan and Jordan went through, but kind of what I saw was a very diverse group, there was kind of like Jordan and Dan was here, like bright lights, and music coming from every booth, and the signage, the signage was the one thing that stuck out for me this year, was every supplier had great big signs, and we'll get into who I thought had the best signage later, but everybody's trying to compete with everybody, and trying to get the best and the brightest sign, and display their product and things like that, so even your small manufacturers, they had some of the best signage, versus your aristocrat, your light and wonder, things like that. Everybody has cages around their booth now, we'll call them cages, I'm not sure what other people are calling them, but you've got to make sure that they can swipe your badge to get in, so that's kind of disappointing to me, like after the show, everybody's going to see it anyway, so I'm not sure what the whole theory is behind that, but again, I'm not a manufacturer, and everybody's welcome to come to my place of employment. Walking around the show, most people have their booths in the same place every year, which is nice, because you can kind of plan your event and all your meetings, if you do it right, to make that, IGT every, combining them was actually a convenience for me, because I just spent an hour there this year, and then Blueberry, some of these smaller ones, you get smaller times with them, but overall, the show was, I thought it was really busy this year, I don't know the count of it, but on Tuesday, it was pretty crazy walking through the show, and trying to figure out where your next meeting was, or who you were meeting, you run into the same people the whole show, and you don't see others, so I think the show was a major success, I was very impressed this year, I do like that not every manufacturer had a new cabinet this year, every year, we got a new cabinet, there was only a couple that I saw that really had that, so it's nice to actually not have new cabinets every year for every manufacturer. Thank you, totally agreed on the wall, they seem to get a little bit higher each year in security, as the door gets a little bit more robust, kind of going off of your guys' comments on signage, let's just sort of jump into premium, so premium continues to sort of be a fast lane for our industry, it's growing every single quarter, growing in absolute numbers, even despite macro headwinds, we're seeing the install base grow, so kind of going off that, let's sort of talk about some of the vendors' premium product, who stuck out to you, or was there any particular games or merchandising that we could talk about? Did you want me to go first? Yep, go for it. The vendor that stuck out to me for signage was Vitro, some of their signage, they had brown signs, they had triangle signs, they had every kind of signage you would think of, I'm not sure who does their sign packages, I'm sure they're not in-house, but they stuck out more than any of your bigger manufacturers to me. I was actually going to touch on Vitro, I actually asked when I was in the booth, because I was so impressed by the sign package of the company called... I'm glad I wasn't the only one. Yeah, no, no, a lot of people were, a company called Fi, I believe, and I loved it, because it struck a really nice balance between digital and mechanical hardware, so it was really impressive. I know we're going to get to core, but I was just impressed by them, among others, they made a statement, the amount of business they do today does not really justify the size of the booth that they invested in, but their ownership said, hey, we intend to be a big player, we're going to present that way, and that's a statement of intent that's impressive to me, and there were others like that. Premium side, for me, it's been challenging the last few years, when you get beyond Rubber Stick Red, Light and Wonder, and IET, it's been tough to feel confident giving premium footprint to others, and at the same time, it's a very tough business for them to be in, it's very expensive, if you get aggressive and stuff doesn't work, you're investing in hardware, getting it out there, and operators are pulling it off, so you try to be responsible to suppliers, but I was impressed in the quality and the aggressiveness that a couple of suppliers in particular are making to get back into that space, so one was Blueberry, I was really impressed by what they call their sign package, but I was very impressed by, they have a really exciting core sign package, as well, in what they call the Lighthouse, but they're going to make a push in premium, which I'm excited about, and I'm excited about AGS, as well, they're one that has tiptoed into it, struggled, they've ridden that roller coaster a little bit, but they're refocusing more on big form factor, which I think is a really smart tack to take, and I'm a little more optimistic on what they're doing, and then lastly, I'll touch on Aristocrat, like obviously, the buzz around the show is what are they going to do with Monopoly, and they're trying to make a big splash there, I was impressed by it, I think everybody was impressed by it, I'll be honest, I have no idea how successful it could be, I have no idea how much they paid for that license, to me, it doesn't really matter, just like the fact that they're able to, while everybody else is pulling back on licensed IP, like they're able to aggressively go in that space is a huge show of strength, and just saying, hey, we're taking the mountain right now, we're there until proven otherwise, gives me confidence that whether Monopoly is a home run or not, the investment that they're putting in the premium means they're going to have hits somewhere and continue to be in a really strong position, while other people are obviously trying to up their game, so whether it's Monopoly, or whether it's trying to tweak and relaunch NFL next year, and have more success on it, it's just impressive to see the big investments that they're making. Yeah, and I would follow along, talking about signage, totally agree with Zetro, fantastic signage, AGS, love the large form factor, Blueberry, clever, right, their whole booth just becomes, it's a clever approach, right, they're trying to do something slightly unique, but again, leveraging a lot of customer data is fantastic, the one, L&W, I would call out here to mirror the comment from Dan about Aristocrat, which is their lightweight product in the wall configuration in particular, pod, look good, but I think the wall, for me, the Frankenstein returns was probably the top three games for me this year, just total, across any category, any supplier, when you see the Frankenstein trigger, and the head above the game catches on fire and starts screaming, that light presentation, I thought, was fantastic, and to me, that, it's not necessarily a sign by itself, right, the lightweight comes with the box itself, so you got to kind of, it's embedded signage around it, but I thought super clever evolution on the horizon, where previously you saw the light ring around the horizon screen, last year, this year they take it and put it on a different form, but the ability for the game to actually interact with it in a much more clever and creative way, I thought was fantastic, I think, honestly, one of my favorite games in general, but also just overall one of my favorite packages we saw, Monopoly from ATI is also on my list as a top three, the presentation was fantastic, the sign with the little actual hotels around the top of it that lit up, very, very clever, and then I'll give credit to Aruze as well in signs, they've got three different sign packages now, obviously smaller vendor, we have one of the three, we have the original, which is the beacon round at the top, and then the pillars that hold it spin, kind of a round in a circle down to the base, that's a really cool sign, and honestly for us, we've had a ton of success with it, it looks beautiful on the floor, so I'd shout that out, some creative use, I don't know if they need three signs, I didn't give them that feedback, three seems like a lot, but they were clever, they were cool, and they look really good, so again, want to shout that out as well. I want to circle back to the Monopoly sign, one of the things I learned about it was they can take the houses off in the future, and even replace them with different packages if they redo their sign, so they made the sign so they could actually refurbish it for a different, they make a different Monopoly, they can actually put different houses or different things on top of it, which I thought was really neat, they were thinking ahead, instead of just doing one sign forever, now they can actually change that sign to a different theme. Thank you, thank you guys, and then before we move on to Core, if you just had to pick just one, like what was your top, sort of either premium cabinet, game, signage, if you called out just one, what would that be? I am a bias by this, but I'm an old school Lightning Link fan, so Lightning Link, Ten Years Storm I think is a great evolution, we've already talked a little bit about Monopoly, I talked about Frankenstein a little bit already, those were my other two, but the Lightning Link Ten Years Storm, if you look at it, it's a combination of all the best features from their Link games, I think every one of us probably believes that game is going to crush, so it's good to continue to see that evolution, a little bit boring in the sense that again, it's just an evolution of their Link product, nothing super unique, but I love that, I think that's a fantastic evolution for them, I expect that game to do fantastic. Yeah, I second what Jordan said on the Light Wave, from LW, and specifically the wall version of it, very impressive. I got to go with Monopoly, I think that's going to be a home run on their part, I really do. Great, thank you guys, so let's move on to Core, I think you're right Randy, I did see, usually we see a cabinet from each vendor every year, due to, I don't, I think that's slowed down a bit this year, with a little bit more focus on supporting the existing, the most recent cabinets, so let's sort of jump into Core here, who or which suppliers stuck out for you guys for Core, and did you sort of see any overarching themes in what you were presented for the Core games? The one thing I saw, and I'd be curious if Dan and Randy saw the same thing, which is just a lot of bonus within a bonus, right, that was kind of like, if you're going to find one feature that was unique this year, obviously we've seen that previously, it kind of started two years ago, but it never seemed to really kind of catch speed, this year I felt like, if my notes are correct, every single vendor had at least one hold and spin inside a hold and spin special trigger symbol, which is interesting to me because that mechanic itself, I don't know, has been, it hasn't been super fantastic, you know, it hasn't like just crushed it, right, but the use of it, I think there's some clever uses this year, so I'm excited to see some of those, I thought that really stood out to me, and then from a vendor standpoint, I think I'll give credit to the little guys, just as a group, collectively, much better presentation on Core products, AGS, they have the BaBaDaFa Dragon Game, I'm probably totally mispronouncing the name, but I apologize if I am, again, I wrote this one down, it's a hold and spin with inside a hold and spin, but I love the firecracker metamorphics on the front that trigger the bonus, and then just the overall presentation of the art, again, I think they've done a great job upping their art, and then I wanted to shout out, Zetro is the other guy, so we talked a little bit about them, but I want to give a specific call out to Brave Dragon, that was their game that they're showcasing on their new cabinet, the fantasy cabinet, Brave Dragon, I thought was really interesting, because it's got a lucky cell where if you get in the hold and spin, get a symbol to drop in that, you get special features, but you can move that around, you can actually pick, and I know it's perceived, right, like it's not true control, but from a player perspective, I thought it was very clever to actually move and pick which cell, which square on the screen was my lucky one, I like that, I just wanted to make sure I shouted that out, and I thought that was a really cool presentation. Yeah, I'll jump in and actually second what Jordan just said, like, one of the things that really stood out to me was that bonus within a bonus, and it's interesting, not just that they had it, but they were specifically calling it out, right, so it seems to me like that was a very intentional focus by a lot of folks, that they're seeing that as a trend that's emerging that they want to capitalize on. I just saw the question come in, the sign company was Phi, I believe it's F-I, or F-Y-I, something like that, but Phi. I'll focus a little more on hardware, like, one company I was very impressed by that, you know, I think we're all a little hesitant going in because it was unknown and their cabinet was launched at the show, was Anami, right, so the Solstice cabinet, to me, was just an incredible leap forward, and if you had gone in and seen that cabinet not known, it was in the Konami booth, I don't think anyone would have said, oh, that's the Konami cabinet, because just what they did in terms of presentation from the, you know, from the hardware to the integrated immersive lighting to the sound bar and the sound package is just such a step forward, and beyond the hardware, you know, I'm pretty confident that the three launch teams that they highlighted are pretty safe and should be successful. I mean, two of them were pretty safe in terms of one of them was, you know, kind of that training bonus mechanic, one of them was a traditional three-pot game, and then, like, as Jordan said on the mechanics where you're trying to stay safe but kind of deviate around it, the third one was, like, a little more fun, cartoony game than the Bomberman, I believe it's called, but I was very impressed, and I think there's an opportunity, you know, not just they, but you know, really probably ABS are the two that are saying, hey, we see an opportunity here, right, competition's better for everyone, you know, we don't want a big two or a big three, there's going to be ship share up for grabs, we're going to go after it. I was also impressed by the fantasy cabinet from Zetro, the new curve version of the prism, I believe it was Spark from Incredible, it was really nice, I like how they continue to integrate Encore the leaderboard signage at the top, which is really innovative and makes their product stand apart. You know, in terms of themes, you know, Aristocrat, I think this has a ton of runway with Barons from you know, Low Money and Spooky Link alone, right, and so I'm very confident that, you know, FOMO Money and a couple others are just going to keep iterating and be able to get tons of cabinets out and get more runway from getting expansion of those, but I think it was a win for the small suppliers because just everybody who presented a new cabinet presented one that was very nice, and the only other one I'll call out is you know, there was a couple less premium or smaller form factor cabinets that were out there. One in particular, I was impressed by the IGT, the Rise, the Rise, we call it the Rise 32 or the Rise Multi, which is kind of that triple 32 display that I guess is ultimately replacing the peak 32, but it was a really nice, immersive, you know, kind of replicating that curve screen with three monitors, and I think it presents really well and it could be something that's innovative and successful for that. To tie into Dan, I think Aristocrat and the Baron Portrait have the largest library of content there is and probably not going away anytime soon with that, but the one core product that stood out, and I'm not sure if you guys saw it, at the IGT booth they had progressives that were linked, but they weren't progressives, they were symbol-driven progressives that you could link amongst you wanted at least two games, but like I was thinking six or eight games and it looks like progressives, but each time these symbols are hit it increments the progressives, and somebody else can actually hit that on a different game, so it's a whole new concept that's actually not progressive, and I'm not sure how the backend works yet, because I didn't have time to get into it, but watching how that is, and changing the denoms, if one person's playing a different denom, you can see that that progressive is going to hit, you can change your denom to go and try to hit it, so you're really chasing it, and it's still perceived persistence, but it's you know it's also a must-hit by, like you know it's going to hit by this time so it's an interesting concept, because they're linking games together and I don't know how math works on that, but it'd be something interesting to see when I do look at a parse sheet, how that's going to affect gameplay on a single game, because somebody else ran a progressive up on their symbols, and now you're going to hit it, so that's kind of the game I'm most excited about Blueberry, I really like Blueberry and where their focus is, they're definitely a smaller vendor, but getting a license in Nevada now is kind of huge for them, so I think that will help them drive a lot more going forward especially revenue-wise, so the biggest gaming market in the US, so once you get a license there, your potential for growth is huge Thank you guys, and then we will get to what the panelists thought was the best exhibit, that will be our final sort of topic here, so we'll get to that, one other quick Q&A question before we move on to the next topic, there's been a couple of M&A movement recently this last year, year and a half, with IGT and Every as well as AGS going private, any quick thoughts on how that sort of impacts you guys, if at all, in maybe obvious ways versus latent ways The one thing I recall with the IGT and Every, one, give them credit for the speed at which they combined some of the titles into the same boxes and cross-tabulated some of their stuff, I thought that was fantastic, but looking forward, IGT and Every probably could not have more different feels to their games, and now you're bringing those studios and those art packages and those sound packages and those teams together I think it hopefully will create some very unique content, that's what I'm excited about, like if you look at an IGT game, most of them have a very similar feel, right, they feel IGT, you kind of play and probably guess that it's an IGT game, and Every was similar, but very different in the way they approached games and the way they built games, I'm actually really, really excited about that, you know, the one call-out I had was for that particular, Cash Machine Jackpot with a Wheel of Fortune wheel above it, like, come on, that's fantastic, that's awesome again, that's really cool, I like stuff like that, but I'd love the idea of maybe someday we get a smoking hot Wheel of Fortune, right, with a little baby devil interacting with the Wheel of Fortune, that to me is I think bringing, it doesn't even seem to make sense on the surface, the brands are so different, them coming together though, I think you can get some really creative, fun things, and so I'm really interested to see where their game design people take that long term. Yeah, I think it was, I think they said it was from the time the transaction closed to the time of the show was seven weeks, right, so just the sheer fact that, you know, I'm sure it's madness behind the scenes, right, but just the sheer fact that they were able to present and this booth came together is an incredible accomplishment, right, and like, everyone's going in with their eyes open, you know, and I think IGT, you know, will be very transparent about this, like, it's going to take time for them to identify what their hardware roadmap looks like, right, how they, where they combine, where they keep separate product lines, does it take time for them to articulate that to customers, and so I think, you know, the fear that's on everyone's mind is, you know, an area that they overlap, right, so peak curve Dynasty Soul on the stepper side with Twitter Classic and Diamond RS, you know, what makes sense for me to continue to invest aggressively on, right, will I invest in both, will I pull back on Soul and invest in peak curve, these are obvious questions, and just the fact that they realize, hey, our focus needs to be on interoperability is the line that obviously goes a long step in giving people confidence that, hey, in the short term, whatever cabinet you buy, we're going to support it and we're going to have, you know, we're going to have content and it's going to perform and we're going to be able to give you confidence that you can give us time to figure out where we go from here and communicate what that strategy is. The other one I'll call it is Treasures of the Lamp I think is the other one they showed, which was the follow-up to Mystery of the Lamp on every Dynasty Soul cabinet, which was really nice. You also asked about smaller suppliers, right, and for me, whether it's ABS and Brightstar or whether it's Gaming Arts and Mercur I think it just gives operators more confidence that more money is going to be going into R&D. You know, one of them that's not on that list is Blueberry, but one thing that really impressed me is they said from, I think, 2022 to 2025 with their transaction, they grew from one studio to I think they now have seven studios, and so you're just looking at, you know, there's more money going to R&D, more money going into game design and more confidence, and I don't think anybody's going to all of a sudden start exponentially throwing more money at any individual suppliers, but it gives people faith that I can invest with confidence, the content's going to be there, the content's only going to get better. For me, Jordan said it when I saw the Wheel of Fortune sitting on top of every box, I knew that, like, that's when it became real, right, because now they're combined. It'll be interesting to see what cabinet or where their focus is going forward and what that looks like for their roadmap. Obviously, they have lots of studios now to do game design, and for me, Every Steppers are probably some of my best products on my floor, especially in my Class 2 market. I really hope that Every does not go away from that, and they keep the Every, you know, how their play mechanics are, and that stuff, take some of the ITT Wheel of Fortune or some of those mechanics and throw them in, and then vice versa, like Dan said, bringing, or maybe it was Jordan, bringing things together and combining them for new products, you know, Core would be nice, but a lot of people just want to do Premium, because it's, you know, more money for them, but as long as they do a mix of the two, I think they'll be just fine. I'm excited to see where it goes, you know. Thank you, guys. So let's move on to a couple questions here. I'm going to get to these. Let's jump over to sort of specialty products right now, so it could be ETGs, video poker, I don't think I saw any skill, but if there was skill, Randy, if you want to talk to anything Class 2, but let's sort of, if there's anything you guys want to call out for that sort of your non-video, traditional video reel and steppers. First I'll call out FBM. They're a small little market tier. I'm not exactly sure what the game was called, but it's like a lotto game, and it had little balls on it, if Jordan or Dan know which one I'm talking about, but it's kind of a, AGS has Class 2 games in Oklahoma, and it reminded me exactly of them, however it's a Class 3 game. So it has like slotto balls, and you can pay for like different balls and things like that. It's an interesting concept. I don't know if it'll work in the end, but it's definitely worth me looking at it more. Other than that, Light and Wonder, they had a brand new table game they were displaying on their showroom floor right when you walked in, so you had to see it before you could see anything else. Excited to see how that performs, and then the last one, you go into the gigantic walls of the interblock booth, with everything they have, and they have roulette, they have probably six different roulette versions with bonuses, and you can spin dice in the middle of the roulette wheel now, and you have the marble race that goes up and down, and they shrunk it from last year's size to probably half the size, that way more people will be willing to put it on their floor. Those are exciting things for me, but as it evolves, I would also like more Class 2 stuff evolved with that. Currently, you know, I have Class 2 interblock roulette. That's the only kind of carnival game I have on my floor for Class 2. Yeah, interblock, incredibly impressive, especially in the years mine, right? Like all those forward-thinking roulette variations, the marble racing, live crafts, I think it's finally at the point where people can feel confident with dice recognition, and I think they still have an 18-month or so head start on anyone else coming to market, so very impressive there. The other thing, I mean, it's still Class 3, but Gaming Arts presented Taking Online hits, right? So they've done, it's just a pure licensing deal, but they've done a deal with Evolution and a deal with White Hat and one or two others where they're bringing Divine Fortunes and a couple other hits from Online to brick and mortar, and it's kind of a, you know, it's a low-tech solution, but it's the first example I'm aware of. I'm probably wrong, someone else may have done it, but that they've taken a hit and tried to bring it land-based. It'll be interesting to see how that evolves and how successful that is, but it's nice to see people thinking outside the box and making those kinds of transitions. Yeah, and I'll just follow along. Interblock, obviously, the biggest, I think, investment of any company into non-traditional gaming this year, right? The Amuse product line, I do believe the team told us they have, like, 15 games in the pipeline over the next two years. We'll see how many of them actually make it out, right? There's some complex hardware there, so give credit to them for trying, but I like what I see, right? And the call-out to me, last year it was, they called it Frenzy Roulette. This year they've modified it. I may be misspeaking, but I do believe it's like Goldmine Roulette, but it has a Goldmine bonus on it, a roulette wheel, right, where you give a little bit back in the base game, on the base phase, they drop a little bit, but then you get the multiple balls to come out. That multiple ball feature is still my favorite thing that they've done. We're very, very excited. I was actually super excited about Frenzy Roulette last year. Ultimately, again, they reworked it and changed it now. Still excited about that product, very high on that. And then for us, we do have properties regionally where I'm interested to see how the bingo game does. It's a little bit slower, so they're trying to overcome that with the six cards requirement to play, but as we all know, bingo surprisingly has legs in certain markets and can really, really do well. So for properties that have the space, I'm kind of surprised by that bingo game. I thought it played a lot better than I thought it presented a lot better than I was kind of anticipating, so I was excited about that. And then they're talking about some iterations of bingo to get kind of more entertainment driven, more cartoony driven, using some of their technology group out of, it sounded like Japan. That to me sounds like some, again, for certain markets, I think a really interesting concept to see where it goes and how it evolves, but definitely want to give them credit. And then ITT adding Wheel of Fortune to the stadium. Obviously, stadiums for a while, Interblock has dominated the stadium market for the last five to ten years. I don't know that anyone else is really trying to compete too hard in it, but then L&W has their new version they're coming forward with with the Asidian cabinet, the virtual games where you can play and actually add progressives and things. Very interesting there to see how that evolves. But IGT, give them credit. They have some amazing brands. Bring one of those into the stadium and we'll just see what happens, right? So be interested to see how the Wheel of Fortune into the IGT stadium does going forward. Be interested to see if that's a winner and if that turns into something bigger or not. But I like the cross use of those brands that they already have in house. Great stuff, guys. So before we move into sort of systems and tech, let's just answer one of these Q&A questions. I like this question. So kind of going back to core versus premium. Premium footprints have been increasing quarter over quarter, year over year. So at what point, this has been pretty steady. Is there a cap on this in your guys' view or do you sort of see this as just sort of continuous as far as we can see? And then what's also your opinion on how the vendors sort of distribute games core versus premium in terms of, hey, you need the newest whatever Huff & Puff or Buffalo or whatever, but it's premium in their strategy on that. What's your perspective on those things? I guess I could take a shot at this one. To my mind, I don't believe there's a cap, but I believe it's going to be operator to operator. And how you think about core versus premium, I think you could convince yourself that I don't think anyone, I'll let me take that back, I don't think anyone probably has the right number of Dragon Link. Like, let's just use that as an example. So I think that puts pressure on this idea of, like, oh, well, I'm only going to do 5% of my floor, 10% of my floor, 15%, whatever that number is. I don't subscribe to that, but we all have cost pressures that we have to deal with. And that does create an artificial style cap. So what I prefer to see happening and what I think is actually really, really smart by the bigger vendors, and I hope to see the little guys as they scale up a little bit do this, is these brands cross both sides. You see, if you want Huff & Puff, but you don't have the ability to lease it, you don't have any money to lease it, you can buy Huff & Puff. It's a different variant. They have a couple, right? But they have multiple variants of Huff & Puff that are for sale, and they have multiple variants of Huff & Puff that are for lease. And I think Aristocrat obviously has the longest running history of this, which is Buffalo. There's always going to be Buffalo variants that you can buy and Buffalo variants that you can lease. And I would challenge the vendors for the big brands, their rock star flagship games, find ways to put a version in core and then an upscaled version in the premium. I think that makes a ton of sense. And then that helps kind of bypass this idea of, is there a market? Because at the end of the day, there is a cap on how much you're willing to spend from an operating standpoint on leased products. But in theory, you still want to offer some of those brands. You don't want to get priced out of a brand. And then from that, I think just I would challenge operators to be creative on how they think about premium and be a little bit more creative on how you think about the cost. Again, we've all had those conversations with finance where they're pretty hard line at times, but the upside on a lot of the newer premium stuff is fantastic. But it's a give and take. So I like that idea, though, of seeing the brands exist on both sides with kind of a mid-level version in the core and an upscaled, a little bit more feature-driven version on the premium. I think that's the way, that's the feedback I give to the vendors going forward for those who have the capacity to make games like that. Yeah, 100% agree and second everything you just said, Jordan, especially what you said about the brand extension. And how you challenge folks to think about that. A couple of things I would add. So obviously the trend has been the trend. And the trend has been increasing and increasing really driven by performance. And I think, as Jordan said, every operator is different. But in aggregate, as long as that trend continues, I think most people would say there's significant more runway for that to continue to increase, especially as the capital replenishment rates seem to be steady or certainly not increasing over the years. So hopefully it gets older and older as a way to compensate. But I do think there's an economic piece to this as well, which is, I was having this conversation with someone else at the show that, like, if Lightning Lake's 10-year anniversary. So if you go back 10 years and you look at what Lightning Lake came to market in, in terms of cost, let's say 50, 55 bucks, give or take. When you look at, if you benchmark what your average box costs that you're buying 10 years ago versus how much purchase price inflation has gone up, it's astronomical compared to what daily fees have been benchmarked at. So as long as box purchase price continues to escalate at a much more accelerated rate than average daily fees, premium becomes more and more economical, right? If that trend obviously changes, the economics change. But if that trend continues and suppliers can really fade the cost of that premium by, you know, longer terms and things like that that they can't do on a gain sale, as long as that continues, economics can become relatively better on premium versus purchase. And I think that continues to play a role as well. I think it depends on whether you're a big corporate, small little casino, tribal casino. I think it's your, what is your reinvestment each year versus what are you willing to shell out each month versus, you know, purchasing, you know, $2 million in boxes a year. Are you more comfortable with purchasing or giving at least $2 million a year and not having that liability? It's going to be not one person, but, you know, multiple people out of property trying to decide that. So the operator, as far as like percentage of floor or the floor share of lease versus premium, it's, you know, if 10% of your floor is premium and it's doing 40% of your win, well, that tells me I probably need more premium product on the floor, whether it be more huff and puff, high rise or, you know, lightning link 10-year anniversary. It's finding a balance also and fighting with your, you know, your internal team on why you're so much over every month. As long as you can justify, you know, what your cost is to have a premium content is outweighing, you know, the performance of those cabinets, then I think you can continue to add more lease, but you're going to have to fight internal battles on occasion as well. And as far as Dan was talking about the manufacturers, you know, for them, they got to balance. They got to give us core product for the ones that want to purchase it and they got to give us the premium product for the ones that would prefer to lease it. You know, and over time, some of them start out as a premium product and then they will let you purchase it at a later date once they have more premium content available. So I think it's a fine balance for each property, not so much just in general. Thank you, guys. And sort of shifting gears here away from EGMs for a second before we wrap up in 15 minutes here, let's just quickly go over sort of technology, systems, cashless, AI, just a couple points of feedback there from you guys would be great. I'll take a stab at it first. I've had multiple systems over time. Currently, I have OASIS system. I've had SDS. I've had ACSC. I've never had Konami. I've had the New Valleys SDS. As far as OASIS, it seems like they're investing a lot into the loyalty, which turns into cashless. I think cashless is great, but I don't think we're ready for it quite yet in general. I think we're still once the people, these millennials get 10 more years, I think cashless is going to be huge. The companies that are doing it now and getting ready for it, while it's minimal use now, I think the usage is going to go way up here very soon. I don't know when that is, but it's going to be there. As far as AI, I love using AI for the things I can. I can't use it, obviously, for some things, for numbers and things like that, but it does make people such as my job very easier to write things or put things together. Then QCI, they have a new AI feature in theirs where I can literally tell it all the data I want. It'll literally pull it from a day, a week, a month, whatever I want, and literally display it. Then I can tweak it just with a few words, even talking to it. It'll tell me exactly what I want, what it took an hour to analyze takes five minutes. I personally like the use of that myself. It's interesting. You now have a fintech company that's merged with a slot manufacturer, right? With IGT and every unit. It's too early for them to present much at the show, but I think it's pretty clear to be focused on interoperability between IGT Advantage and fintech. What comes of that and how that improves operations for Advantage customers, I think it's really fascinating in terms of not just how it benefits them, but also how it's going to jumpstart and cause Aristocrat and Light and Wonder and Acres and others to innovate as well. I think we'll see some innovation on that front come this time next year, and that'll be really interesting. Then AI, the show is what you make of it. You can spend the whole show looking at slot machines. You can spend the whole show going to educational sessions that are all about AI. I heard at a few booths how AI is starting to integrate itself within the game design process, specifically with how folks are using it to follow more quickly. I don't know exactly what that means. I didn't ask too many questions, but I think it's really fascinating over the next year how AI is going to play a bigger role in game design. That obviously does have a big impact on the folks that are buying slot products. I definitely agree with Randy and Dan. I think the cashless stuff has gotten better. I'm a huge proponent personally of cashless, so I was really excited to see it. The technology came out the last year, so it's not brand new at G2E, but really seeing a lot of the QR codes that could tie straight to different funding systems so you can bypass the resort wallet. The number one pushback we use, just as an industry, we talk about a lot, it pops up all the time, which is it's very difficult to get people to sign up for resort wallets that are overly cumbersome to deal with. Technology companies that have tried to bypass this, like Acres, Pavilion, several groups, IGT has one where you can basically just fund to the game directly through some sort of direct pay like you would buying Starbucks or Chipotle without having to go through a resort wallet, I think is a really interesting bridge. I think that will help people get familiar with the technology, so I'm really excited to see that span out from there. I think that's how you teach people. Make it as easy to start cashless as you can, and then understanding that eventually you hopefully morph them into a pure cashless player through some sort of resort wallet with a connection to their bank and everything like that long term. The AI stuff, fantastic. QCI doing great stuff out there. I'll also call out Gaming Analytics and Tangam. Both represented really well. Their product lines continue to evolve. They continue to invest. Great companies. I think they have wonderful products. We actually saw this vendor two years ago inside the Aruze booth, but I wanted to call them out because they've continued to evolve. I'm probably mispronouncing the name, but Umpqua Technology, a small little group doing progressive meter reads by intercepting the display feed out of your CPU. If you think about the top box where the progressives are sitting, they actually put a little device between the display port, so as it comes out of your CPU into that monitor, they put a little device and then they intercept it and they actually take a picture of the progressives. I love little stuff like that. Obviously, it depends on your regulations and how intensive progressive meter reads are for your property. That's going to be obviously big jurisdictional stuff. Some are more intensive than others, but I love the idea of trying to figure out creative ways to use stuff that already exists. I wanted to shout them out. They mentioned they're now at two different properties doing some trials and some tests, so still early on in their evolution, but I think a very clever use of data that already exists. That display port is already carrying the progressive information, so if we can hijack it a little bit, maybe it can make meter reading easier and it allows it to actually create a long-term database of all those pictures. I think that's cool. Will it get widespread adoption? To be determined, but give credit to them for trying something creative. I'd love to see more little companies do stuff like that. Stuff that already exists, try to piggyback off that in creative ways to provide incremental value. I just thought that was fantastic. I wanted to make sure and shout them out. I want to point out one other thing that I forgot to mention. You wouldn't have seen it on the show floor, but if you had gone to the Genesis showroom in Las Vegas, you would have seen their latest on table games technology. The thing that surprised people that I don't think anyone knew was coming, they've been focused on, for several years, on RFID chips and what you can do with that. There's other companies out there like Tobolo Technologies that have been focused on camera-based solutions that's live at Westgate now and working on some other places. What Genesis showed is the merging of the two. They showed RFID technology to track the chips, converging with cameras from the surveillance system, from the chip tray elsewhere. Now you're looking at chip values, you're looking at card values, you're looking at everything. You can start looking at mis-pays, you can start looking at pay others, you can start looking at card counting and all kinds of stuff. It's the first time anyone's been able to really get a full view of the whole table. It's fascinating how that's going to evolve. Tobolo is an incredible solution as well. I want to shout both of those out. The question everyone's been waiting for, and this is actually two questions. Who in the aggregate presented as the strongest vendor at G2E this year? Sub-question number two here, is there any one vendor you'd like to call out that you think has made a lot of notable progress and you just want to show them kudos? It's kind of two questions. I can go first. The one I thought was the best, as far as just continued evolution, and I know it's an easy one to say, so sorry, it's not that creative, but L&W. L&W's hardware was fantastic. Their library evolution was fantastic. We didn't even talk about the Lock and More Link family that they have coming out. I love what they're doing with their brand, so I was enthralled. The other thing I would call out is the Willy Wonka. I don't know if you guys saw it, but when at certain times Violet, she turns into a giant blueberry and distills the whole cosmic sky screen up. Stuff like that just catches me. I love stuff like that. I would give kind of a kudos to, and Dan mentioned them earlier, but I did want to shout them out in particular. Konami. I thought the Solstice cabinet was fantastic. I went into the show last year very disappointed with where Konami was at. I just felt it was just kind of bland and kind of left for dead almost. Then 12 months later, I thought they had a great show. I love the all-aboard diamond that they have coming on the Solstice. I think when you pod the Solstice, you get the mirror effect on the backlighting. It's fantastic. I give them an honorable mention here as far as deserving callout for a great show and a great improvement year over year. Maybe in my opinion, maybe my most improved supplier, if we were going to ask that question. That's who I would probably pick for that year over year. It's hard to say that Aristocrat and Light and Wonder don't show incredibly every year. They're at the top for a reason. Everyone else is upping their game, but they have incredible boots. Beyond that, not naming one, I think it's really all of the kind of second tier and emerging suppliers that are getting aggressive. The whole show floor moved. I got lost every day, triggered by IGT's boot, but then the cascading changes that happened from that. You have every move into the IGT booth. All of a sudden, AGS invested in a much bigger space and got aggressive. Blueberry invested in a much bigger space, went into the old AGS space. Yitro invested in a much bigger space. It's kind of a top out, but I was impressed by just everybody who said, hey, we're going to take a step forward. We're going to go after some of this market share that's up for grabs. Not just those three, but really all the smaller suppliers that came with great product that I think there's a lot of opportunity for people to grow and come after the big three. To kind of piggyback off what those guys said, I think Dan hit it. Everybody is moving around the show into bigger booths and combining booths, but the one that impressed me the most, and I'm sure you guys had the same presentation, Blueberry actually brings you in, sits you down. You don't have to walk around their whole booth. You sit down in chairs. They show you all of their stuff, all of their games. You can sit there. You have a water or soda or beer if people do that. The presentation Blueberry puts on is better than everybody else's because you get to sit down and relax. They go through their show. Then you get to go out and you get to see their lighthouse and the Sir Mix-A-Lot. Everybody was hearing the Sir Mix-A-Lot music during the show if you were anywhere near Blueberry. So my top one that showed was Blueberry. And then after that, of course, I think L&W probably had the best show there. I was very still impressed with Zetro. Not only their signage, but their games and their content. They want to be a bigger supplier. So how you do that, you bring more games. You bring more content. You bring more staff to run a bigger show. So that's the small supplier that I think definitely had the biggest impact of the show. And then we kind of got just a couple minutes here left. Just really quickly, one thing maybe you didn't like or one thing you'd like to see more of maybe for next year? And just sort of wrap up our thoughts. You guys touched on it already. Enough with the walls. We get it. Once you're inside the booth, it's a very nice calm, quiet experience. But hopefully there's some bounce on that trend because it is nice to bounce around and without appointments, hop in and see some stuff. And it kind of takes away from the fun a little bit. Yeah. I think the wall statement is an intriguing one because some booths that don't have walls are overly crowded. And the ones that have walls, there's nobody in and it feels like a ghost town. So there's a balance to be had there. What I would say is nothing bad stood out to me, but I would counter and challenge the vendors to don't go backwards. The momentum from this show to me is the evolution of all these games, the incremental steps that were made this year. I want to see that continue into next year. Don't take a step back. Don't try to create all these brand new mechanics that nobody understands with all these different variations. Don't put out 50 new cabinets next year. Small steps forward. Let's just keep this momentum going. I wouldn't have anything negative, but that would be a negative. If next year we show up and everybody's got two new cabinets and everybody's got all these mechanics that we've never seen before and that would be super disappointing. I thought the show was fantastic. Let's just continue that evolution into next year and I think you'll keep operators happy. That's what I would say to the vendors. Kind of to go off them, when I walk into the Interblock booth, I feel like I'm in a cage. I can't leave and you have to have permission to go in. If I have something that I am very proud of, I want everybody to see it. If I was an aristocrat, I would have had Monopoly right in the middle as you walk in. Everybody would have saw it as they walked by. That's my perspective of it. If you're proud of something, why are you putting it in a locked vault all the way off the casino floor so nobody can see it? Be proud of what you have. Highlight the things you want. You want other people to see your product and want to be engaged and want to know more about it. That's kind of my takeaway is they should just not allow walls anymore. Thank you guys so much for being on the call today. I know everyone really appreciated your insight and perspective. This will be posted or sent out to everyone in the next couple of days. We'll also put it on the podcast in the next week. I'll record a similar conversation with our game performance database analyst team. We'll have another round of perspective there. Everyone, thanks again and have a good day. Bye. Thanks guys. Thank you. Bye.