Product: Pro Series cabinets and Alpha 2 platform
Manufacturer: Bally Technologies

Bally Technologies is rolling out its Pro Series upright and slant cabinets, complete with the new Alpha 2 platform. The new cabinets and platform will begin rolling out this month at select test sites around the country, and will comprise the bulk of Bally’s display at G2E in November.

The Pro Series is Bally’s first cabinet upgrade since its Elite Series was released eight years ago. Dan Savage, vice president of marketing for Bally, compares the Pro Series to a new car model complete with enticing bells and whistles guaranteed to attract players.

“The most compelling thing, in my opinion, about the Pro Series cabinet is the way you can interact with the game,” Savage says.

The new Pro Series cabinets include high-definition sound packages designed specifically for casino environments; new lighting and jumbo candles that help players celebrate wins; four display monitors; Bally’s touch-screen iDeck; doors that open vertically to improve serviceability; and, of course, the Alpha 2 platform.

Like technology giant Apple, Bally is striving to create state-of-the-art products, and Savage says the company emphasizes content as well as form. Bally has tasked its game developers to begin designing new games for the advanced Alpha 2 platform, which has more memory than the Elite Series and high-definition video technology that allows for 3D graphics, animation and streaming video on the Pro Series cabinet’s four monitors.

“It gives us a whole new canvas or platform for our game developers to make more compelling games,” Savage says. “We handcuffed our game developers to some extent where they could only make games as good as they could before they ran out of memory.” 

The Pro Series cabinets are being released with 12 banks of games—36 specific titles—to begin with, and can be ordered with OLED decks or Bally’s new configurable iDeck, which was inspired by Apple’s iTouch. Savage says Bally is tasking developers to incorporate the iDeck’s technology into bonus rounds.

“It allows our game developers to utilize deeper, richer play experiences by tying the bonus into the base game and the iDeck,” Savage says. “When you add the light configurations, the jumbo candle and the custom sound package, it’s a much better play experience than we’ve ever had in the marketplace, and we think it’s the best platform for games going forward.”

For more information about the Pro Series cabinets and Alpha 2 platform, visit www.ballytech.com/ProSeries.

By Caitlin McGarry

Caitlin McGarry is assistant editor of Global Gaming Business magazine and assistant editor of Casino Connection Nevada.