IGT: Coming Together

IGT leverages the combination of skill and resources of both IGT and Everi

It was July 2025 when Apollo Funds completed the acquisition of IGT and Everi. The ensuing year would see an efficient and surprisingly quick effort to accomplish the monumental task of harmonizing two product cultures into one—preserving individual brands while leveraging the technologies to create new products with the best of both legacy companies.

“This is the first full year in which we are under new ownership before G2E,” says Domenico Pastia, head of global commercial gaming, Class III for IGT. “Last year, we closed on July 1 and we went live in October with G2E, with limited time to plan. We are now fully established with a new strategy, and it reflects a new way of approaching the market. On the video side, on the premium side, on the stepper side, we are already seeing good results from a performance and penetration standpoint.”

This effort was headed by Jean Venneman, who returned to IGT in 2024 as senior vice president of U.S. studios and was made chief studios officer in July 2025. Venneman has a long history with IGT, where she spent 17 years in game and product development and led the team that created the Wheel of Fortune slot machine in 1996.

Venneman’s first job as chief studios officer was to transform the sprawling game development studios of both legacy IGT and Everi into a single R&D unit. “Studios are under my leadership now, encompassing 20 teams, a little over 1,200 employees, in 10 countries,” says Venneman.

“The advantages of having everybody genuinely invested have been numerous. There’s so much more networking, tool sharing, standardizing of processes, all of which have been very helpful. We’re creating a lot of efficiencies, and there are pockets of AI knowledge in certain studios where they’ve done a lot more work in that area, and now they’re sharing it with some of the teams that haven’t been as invested in doing the research of AI, for example.”

Venneman says comments from many of the teams said more communication with their peers has been of great value.

IGT also has added studios beyond the legacy studios. “We are bringing in new talent, as well as continuing to support our current talent,” Venneman says. “Notably, at the beginning of the year, we brought in John Kearns, who’s in charge of our Viva team—which created the game King Khufu, which has shown to be a great success. It debuted at No. 1 and No. 2 on the New Core Video List for the Eilers-Fantini performance report.”

Another recognized game developer is George Bouvier, brought in to work on the creative side. “He’s going to be working with our U.S. teams to review our creative content and see what we can do to ask good questions, and make better games,” Venneman says.

Venneman adds that the organization plans to bring more games from the Australia studio to the U.S., which has been very successful in the past. Meanwhile, teams in the U.S., Austria, Serbia and elsewhere will work on creating Class III content.

 “Diversity of ideas and content can always help make the others better, which is to our benefit,” she says. “We’re focusing more on our internal brands than we have in the past. We have so many brands, and I’m not talking about Wheel of Fortune or other licensed brands; I’m talking about the Wolf Runs of the world.

 “We have some newer brands that we think will continue to do well, like Money Gong, for example, and Rising Rockets… We’re going to continue those. We’re definitely looking at the things that we’ve done well and seeing how we can improve them as one strategy, while another strategy is to continue to press the limits, to try to be a little bit more innovative, to come up with theming or game mechanics that are a little bit more off the beaten path.”

 “There is a trend in the industry beyond IGT in which depth of the game is important,” says Pastia, “because the player has been trained to discover the game while they play and they expect more action than ever before… Once you have three metamorphic pots and you can recombine in many different ways, you have a lot of options to access different game features.”

Pastia says the Global Gaming Expo will be a showcase for the studio system and R&D team. “It will be an important G2E for many reasons,” he says. “There will be a number of surprises; there are things happening at G2E that will be different.”

Rising Expectations

In the Core Video segment this year, IGT has made full use of the two cabinets introduced last year, the Rise55 curved-screen portrait cabinet and the slant-top Rise32 cabinet, which employs three ultra-HD 32-inch displays.

“We’re still supporting our current cabinets as well as focusing on our newer cabinets, such as Rise32 and Rise55,” Venneman says. “We’re keeping the roadmap robust to make sure that when the customer invests in a cabinet, they know that they’re going to have a nice supply of conversion kits in the future of new and unique games for that same cabinet. And that also applies to the Everi cabinets that are in the market”

On the Rise55 cabinet, IGT has reworked last year’s Piggz Link series, which previewed with base games Frankenswine and Jucifer. The new version features the base games Frankenswine and Prince of Porkness.

Frankenswine, of course, is a pig version of the famous monster. The Prince of Porkness is a swine devil, complete with horns and a red suit. Both serve as hosts to three bonus events, triggered by the individual pots. As with the original version, the pots are “Pig a Prize,” triggering a picking game; and free-spin events with pots “Monster Money” and “Free Spins.”

The Pig a Prize bonus is a pick feature with credit values, feature modifier boosts, and jackpot chances including the Grand progressive resetting at $10,000. In Monster Money, the player is given free “Monster Spins,” with a floating win zone that changes size with each spin.

Also on the Rise55 cabinet are Blazin’ Bags, a two-game set featuring multiple wheels, free games and hold-and-spin bonuses; and the Triple Coin series, with Grand Buddha Triple Coin and Grand Cat Triple Coin.

Blazin’ Bags, with Gold and Jade base games, features a concentric wheel, with features and lower-level jackpots on the inner wheel, along with an “Upgrade” symbol that unlocks the outer wheel, which includes upgraded features and the jackpots, including the Grand jackpot resetting at $10,000.

There are two different free-game bonuses, including a “Super Free Games” feature on a six-row grid and four separate hold-and-spin features, including one on three reel arrays. During the bonus feature, cash-on-reels awards appear as money sacks, upgrading to higher-value bags when landing additional bags in the same position. Their values are revealed at the end of the feature.

The Triple Coin series features the Buddha or cat character residing over three collection pots, marked “Prosperity or Blessing,” “Luck” and “Wealth.” One or more of the pots can burst to trigger an enhanced four-array hold-and-spin feature. Prosperity or Blessing provides extra spins. Luck gathers all cash-on-reels awards on the screen and collects them into one symbol. Wealth multiplies cash-on-reels symbols on the lower screen to the higher grids.

IGT will feature three new games on the Rise32 cabinet. Lightning Rails is a 50-line/25-line/five-line game (depending on the denomination) featuring a hold-and-spin feature with two nested secondary hold-and-spin bonuses, gold Lightning Rails and red Lightning Rails. The red Lightning Rails feature triggers a five-space grid with credit prizes or a chance for jackpots if filling in all five spaces with cash symbols. The gold Lightning Rails triggers an eight-space grid. Filling all eight spots with cash symbols guarantees winning one or both of the secondary jackpots. The game then returns to the main hold-and-spin feature.

Also on the Rise32 cabinet is Fire Blast, with base titles Fire Blast Moon Blossom and Jade Kingdom. These games use the math of a hit game in Australia. It also features a pack of bonus events, again including free games and a nested bonus. In another feature, if a red money ball lands in the center position, it replaces any future lower-value awards with the higher value.

A special symbol in the round triggers a bonus wheel, which spins to a large credit award or the Mega jackpot resetting at $1,000. The nested bonus is the only way to win the Mega.

Finally, Split ‘N’ Win Link Boost, with Rise32 base games Split ‘N’ Win Twin Win and Split ‘N’ Win Animal Cruise, includes a feature enhanced by pots marked “Ultra Split” and “Mega Boost.” As part of the Ultra Split pot, Split causes coin symbols to split into two values—not necessarily the same values. A coin can split into lower-level jackpot symbols and multipliers, such as “MINI/3X.”

The Mega Boost pot randomly upgrades cash-on-reels and multiplier amounts while the Ultra Split triggers an enhanced double-array feature.

Stepping Up

IGT’s Core Stepper category is a powerful selection of IGT cabinets in the DiamondRS series and Everi cabinets headed by the Player Classic Premiere, launched last year. According to Anthony Baerlocher, IGT’s senior vice president, product development, IGT has top-performing games on the DiamondRS cabinet and Everi has many high-performing games on the Player Classic Premiere cabinet.

The DiamondRS cabinet features the Diamond Glass transmissive reel overlay, which allows certain video-style bonuses to be added to the mechanical-reel games. At G2E, highlights on the DiamondRS cabinet include the five-reel Big Shot Pinball and the three-reel Double Chili Mania Extremo Banditos!

Big Shot Pinball is an extension of IGT’s classic Pinball slot. On the top monitor is a pinball prize board, including credits on video pegs and an outer wheel including multipliers and the game’s three jackpots. In a lightbox-style bonus, scatter symbols award one, two or three launches of the pinball to the bonus screen. The ball bounces among jackpots, credits, credits with a re-spin, and a wheel symbol. The sound system serves up the authentic sound of pinball.

If the ball touches the wheel symbol, the wheel spins for multipliers up to 10X applied to the pinball prizes, or one of the jackpots, including the Grand, resetting at $20,000.

Double Chili Mania Extremo Banditos! adds a pot-collection bonus to a DiamondRS three-reel, 27-line game. On the top box are three collection pots. Special symbols on the reels add peppers to each of the pots, which increment the nine jackpots on the top screen. As peppers are collected, they move to the next jackpot on the prize ladder.

Meanwhile, two additional larger jackpots are available by collecting money bags or Double 2X Chili Mania symbols. Money bags collected in that pot can trigger a jackpot resetting at $2,500 and collecting Double 2X Chili Mania symbol can trigger a jackpot resetting at $5,000.

The game features voice-overs provided by Lady Luck, the popular slot influencer.

On the Player Classic Premiere Signature cabinet are two entries in the Triple Double series, Triple Double Cash Deluxe and Triple Double Patriot Deluxe. Both are classic three-reel, nine-line steppers featuring double-nudging wild symbols, double-nudging 2X and 3X Wilds, and reel symbols bearing multipliers. The multipliers multiply each other in line wins—2X and 3X become 6X with a winning symbol.

30 Years of the Wheel

The Wheel of Fortune brand—celebrating its 30th anniversary this year—is well-represented in this year’s IGT Premium category. Wheel of Fortune Magic Coins, featured on the Rise55 cabinet, is packed with multiple wheels, a jackpot bonus, a free-spin bonus and a Lock & Respin hold-and-spin feature.

On the left side of the screen is a rising stack of “Money Ball Chests,” which act like collection pots to accumulate coins and multipliers to be used in the base game or in the free-game bonus.

During the Lock & Spin feature, multipliers land on locked awards to multiply the value, including even jackpot awards. The Wheel of Fortune bonus wheel includes credits and all five jackpots, including the top $10,000-plus Grand. A secondary wheel spins to trigger free games or the hold-and-spin bonus.

Wheel of Fortune Triple Wheel Burst, on the DiamondRS stepper cabinet, is a three-reel, nine-line game with mystery pots that can trigger up to five wheel spins, multipliers up to 8X, and up to five pointers on the wheel for multiple awards. It is a wide-area-progressive on the Ultra Link, with the top jackpot starting at $1.125 million.

In addition to the Wheel of Fortune games, IGT will launch brand extensions to the Money Gong and Tiger and Dragon game families.

Money Gong Divine places the huge gong in the center of the Rise55 monitor with three unique bonuses. Pots marked “Free Games” and “Cash Boost” can randomly trigger the Money Gong Bonus, a hold-and-spin feature with the enhancements applied. The hold-and-spin includes “Vortex Pays,” which swirl all cash amounts into one new cash-on-reels symbol.

A special symbol in the hold-and-spin feature triggers a nested secondary hold-and-spin with eight spots. Filling all spots with cash symbols returns the Money Gong Jackpot, a progressive resetting at $500.

Tiger and Dragon Power Sphere on the Rise55 features five “Power Up” pots and multiple free-spin bonuses. The base game includes a “Shift” feature that combines cash-on-reels awards, rearranging the numbers to form the highest possible value.

The Power Sphere Bonus gives the player a choice between three bonuses—the Tiger & Dragon Bonus, The Double Dragon bonus or Action Spins, which awards four spins, each capable of triggering up to all five of the Power Up pots, which enhance the free-spin rounds.

Video Poker Innovation

As usual, IGT will show up at G2E armed with several new specialty video poker games, adding to its growing series of video poker games that offer bonus features for a higher per-hand wager.

Hyper X Poker, available on the standalone CrystalSlant or Sierra cabinets, adds a random multiplier of 2X-10X to dealt winning hands, in exchange for a five-credit bonus bet. Every dealt winning hand gets varying individual multipliers on each hand in play in Triple Play, Five Play and Ten Play configurations, so multipliers are never wasted on a non-winning hand.

Top of the Deck Poker adds a random multiplier linked to the first card dealt. When the feature is active (for a three-credit or five-credit bonus bet), one in six-to-10 games will add a multiplier ranked according to the first card dealt, with all Aces and face cards worth 10X. This latter feature increases the chances of receiving a 10X multiplier to more than 38 percent when triggered.

IGT also will show two new versions of its multi-game bartop programs. Five Star Poker Plus features single-hand versions of several specialty video poker collections—including popular titles Ultimate X, Super Times Pay and Dream Card, along with select keno titles.

There also is a new version of the market-leading Game King multi-game program for the PeakBarTop cabinet, and the CrystalSlant and Sierra standalone cabinets. The new game set brings back Power Keno, Triple Power Keno and two versions of Caveman Plus Keno, as well as introducing the new slot title Cash Eruption as the first linked progressive video slot ever offered in a Game King set.

Pastia says the important takeaway from this year’s G2E lineup is the emphasis on IGT brands. “We put a major emphasis on going back to building our brands, something that IGT went away from,” he says. “We have great brands built up from the ’90s and early 2000s, and the studios and the product organization are really focused now on using data, and following market trends to guide where we should build the majority of our portfolio.

“But we still have a lot of experimental games, new variations of cash-on-reels and alternative progressive games. We’re trying to find that right balance of new innovation.”

Those innovations are bound to come at a more rapid pace in the near future, thanks to the evolving use of new technology in the development process. Moving forward, Venneman says IGT’s R&D department plans to utilize artificial intelligence on an increasing basis to shorten the idea-to-market period in game design.

“We want to leverage AI to do the tasks that are the more operational procedural tasks of game development, versus the creative tasks,” she says. “We want to make sure the creative tasks stay with the humans! But for creating a prototype, for example, we want to be able to put together the idea really quickly and not spend a lot of time just assembling the idea.

“There are some amazing tools out there that can allow us to create a prototype within a couple of days, and it’s a pretty fully formed prototype. It formerly took us a couple weeks to get to that same point. It allows us to flesh out the concept so we can then go straight away to how we can take this concept and really maximize it. We want to release the team from all the procedural parts of making a game and have them focus on the discussions of how we can make this game more interesting, more compelling, more cool, and give us the best opportunity to give the player an amazing experience.”