Aruze Gaming Global – Full Speed Ahead

Within a year of its start, major success has happened for Aruze Gaming Global, and exponential growth is the name of the game. In August 2023, the announcement came that Empire Technology Group was acquiring all the slot-related assets of the former Aruze Gaming America, while its electronic table game assets were to be bought by ETG leader Interblock.

The familiar Aruze logo would survive, as would its slot products, and even its talent, virtually all of which was retained by Empire, rechristened Aruze Gaming Global.

The company’s rebirth was to be led by executives familiar with the successes of the Aruze product line. Kelcey Allison, who had served as CEO of Aruze Gaming America, and was a senior executive of Empire, was named global chief operating officer of Aruze Gaming Global.

As if to emphasize that the past associated with the Aruze name is history, executives and marketing materials prefer to identify Aruze Gaming Global these days simply as AG2.

And AG2 is growing quickly. The company had 76 licenses at its inception in August 2023. As of this summer, the company had expanded its addressable market with licenses in 170 new jurisdictions, including approvals in Macau, the Philippines, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Ontario and dozens more that are in process. The company is establishing offices and distributorships in the Netherlands, Malaysia, the Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam to further extend its international reach.

“It’s been an incredible ride,” Allison says. “Frank Feng (now AG2 chairman and president) purchased the assets of Aruze Gaming America last year. We closed the asset purchase on August 16, 2023, and it has absolutely been a wonderful roller-coaster ride ever since.”

Allison notes that AG2 was able to overcome many former challenges, including a broken supply chain due to the transition. “A lot of things were broken during the Aruze Gaming America bankruptcy, because everything freezes,” he says. “But we are 110 percent back in action. Supply chains are operational, and R&D has done a magnificent job.

“We’ve released 16 titles so far this year, with 38 total for 2024. We’re looking at 52 releases for 2025. The customers have been absolute champions for us.”

All parts of AG2’s operations have ramped up. According to Allison, the company’s shipping capacity for 2024 is 250 games a month and is expected to reach 600 per month by the end of 2026. Studio operations have ramped up as well.

“We have two engineering studios in the Philippines, one with 130 engineers and the other with about 40,” he says. “We have a studio in Las Vegas, and two third-party studios in Australia.” The new company currently has offices in Las Vegas, the Philippines, South Africa and a game planner studio in Tokyo, Japan.

In Las Vegas, the company moved in September 2023 into a new 90,000-square-foot facility, including offices and a manufacturing plant in which games are finished that were developed in Japan—by developers retained from the former Aruze Gaming America.

Allison comments that the former talent of Aruze Gaming America is an important part of AG2’s R&D and executive team mix, including the former top-level executives. “We kept and added staff, because we felt that Aruze R&D was always extremely innovative in the market. They did the Innovator, which was a high-speed stepper. They did Go Go Claw (a simulation of amusement-arcade claw machines), Paradise Fishing, Roll to Win Craps… all really cool, innovative products. We are keeping that intact.”

The results of these efforts have already shown in the field, where the Triple Treasure Pot game family has been turning in big numbers since its introduction to test banks in the summer. At the Global Gaming Expo, AG2’s booth will be double the size of last year’s display, with a total of 62 slots, showing on five different cabinets—the legacy Muso 55, Muso Triple 32, the Speed dual-screen (three 27-inch monitors including the topper) and the HyperSpeed 43-inch portrait cabinet, and the G2E debut of the new Muso Summit cabinet.

The new Muso Summit cabinet features a 49-inch monitor, side LED panels and an animated topper. “It is probably the most innovative cabinet I’ve seen in a decade,” Allison comments.

Present and Future Success

Highlights of AG2’s lineup for the G2E show will include several recent successes, as well as launches of innovative new titles for the coming year.

Prominent will be the successful Triple Treasure Pot, which, as of August, had completed its first 90-day field trial recording performance averaging 2.3 times house average, according to the Eilers-Fantini report. The game family consists of two themes, Heavenly Wealth and Eternal Prosperity.

The central feature is a three-pot perceived-persistence collection bonus. The pots are the Tiger, which triggers a Coin Nudge feature; the Dragon, which triggers a Jackpot feature that can lead to one of four jackpots including a Grand progressive resetting at $8,000; and the Ox, triggering an Expanded Reels feature.

The Tiger feature consists of five free spins yielding multiple cash-on-reels symbols, tallied every spin. A random multiplier on the fifth reel can increase all cash-on-reels amounts.

The Ox feature duplicates this sequence on a double reel array, with 100 paylines instead of the base game’s 50. The Dragon Jackpot feature awards 10 free spins, with jackpot icons filling spots on each jackpot display above the reels. Players can win multiple jackpots during this feature.

Naturally, the goal is to trigger all three pots at once for a big-money bonus.

Another highlight at G2E will be Long Fu Zhu, which debuted in California late this summer. This game features free-spin, hold-and-re-spin and wheel bonus features. Two adjacent orb symbols in the primary game trigger the wheel, which includes credits, multipliers and the four lower jackpots—three static bonuses and a progressive.

Six orbs trigger the hold-and-re-spin feature, which locks cash-on-reels and jackpot symbols in a three-spin cycle. The triggering symbols lock in place as cash-on-reels symbols at the start of the cycle. The spins return to three with each orb or jackpot symbol. Filling the entire screen returns the top Grand Jackpot.

On the Muso Triple 32 is Dancing Panda, with base titles Supreme Fortune and Supreme Festival. This is another hold-and-re-spin game, its bonus including a “Fusion” feature in which cash-on-reels symbols—scrolls in this case—fuse to become one large cash symbol. According to Allison, the game was logging two times house average its first week in the field.

Another unique twist on the hold-and-spin feature can be found in the Bingo Jackpot series—Bingo Jackpot Las Vegas and Bingo Jackpot New York.

In this 50-line game, the hold-and-re-spin feature replicates a bingo card, and cash-on-reels symbols in standard bingo configurations pay a bonus in addition to the awards displayed. All cash-on-reels symbols lock in place, but the bingos recorded pay off according to a jackpot ladder, ranging from $100 for five bingos to a $5,000-plus progressive for 12 bingos.

AG2 will launch two separate games utilizing ways-to-win formats with unique reel configurations. In Xin Yun Qiu, a 3-4-4-4-3 array is utilized (three rows of symbols on the outer reels, four rows on the inner reels). In this game, the hold-and-re-spin feature deploys a six-spin cycle instead of the normal three, and includes wild symbols and multiplying wild symbols along with the cash-on-reels awards.

A sphere above the reels acts as a collection pot, triggering free spins or a jackpot picking bonus.

Power Tower Dragon and Power Tower Lion feature a 4-4-5-4-4 reel configuration. Six or more orbs trigger a hold-and-re-spin feature in which a second reel set can be unlocked with six more orbs. In addition to cash-on-reels symbols, the hold-and-re-spin feature includes all jackpots, including the top Grand prize.

According to Allison, some of the new AG2 games include a feature called “Pick to Play,” which allows players to pick the bonus feature for their game during the primary game.

In all, AG2 is off and running on its growth path. “Now that we’re stabilized and we’ve got the planes running at good altitude, we’re looking to the future, and how to grow to be a better partner to our customers in the casino industry,” Allison says. “Our owner, Frank Feng, is always looking for M&A opportunities, and I would say over the next three to five years, he would want to take the company public and compete with the top tier of suppliers.”

But for now, Allison says, AG2 is ready for the big show. “We’re looking forward to G2E,” he says. “It’s going to elevate the game.”