Konami Gaming, Inc. – Spreading Out

Konami Gaming, Inc. has spent the past two years positioning itself for the future, and the results are beginning to blossom. New talent, new sales and R&D product plans, and new offices around the world have helped Konami branch out to new verticals, including a rapidly growing iGaming business.

“Konami is focused on three core areas of the business,” says Tashina Lazcano, Konami’s senior director of marketing and communications. “First are land-based games. That includes historical horse racing, VLT/VGT, Class II, and of course, Class III.”

The company’s second core business is in systems, with the company’s popular Synkros casino management system in a constant state of expansion.

“The other core business area is iGaming, where Konami operates its own remote gaming server that integrates with many of the world’s top internet gaming systems, to help drive our games across a variety of online real-money and online social sites,” Lazcano says.

All of those areas improved performance in the past year, according to Lazcano, due in no small part to the strengthening of the company’s leadership team. Last year brought the addition of Stephanie Lau, a longtime operations executive with Station and MGM Resorts, as vice president of sales enablement; and Eric Schultz, who returned to Konami—where he previously served on and led the software engineering team for 13 years—as vice president of studio operations after five years with Everi.

In August 2024, Chris Rowe joined Konami as vice president, North American game sales. Rowe was formerly with Aristocrat for 18 years, serving as managing director of that company’s operations in Latin America and EMEA markets.

“Despite joining the organization halfway through the year, Chris Rowe has had a significant impact on helping our company reach its annual goals, as well as working collaboratively with customers to help give them success,” Lazcano says. “Stephanie Lau joined the organization in January of last year and brings with her nearly 20 years of experience in casino operations. And since she’s joined, she has helped transform the way our product shows up in the market and has worked collaboratively with our customers for mutual gains.”

Schultz has already made a mark as vice president of studio operations. “He’s really brought our engineering, art, audio and specialty market teams together to work on fantastic new creations as well as overall improvements for their group,” Lazcano says.

In all, she says, Konami is “in a state of growing global reach,” with seven offices worldwide, including expanded offices in Europe and Latin America. “This year, we opened our office in Slovenia, and it is aimed at giving more direct sales support and service for the Europe market, especially as it relates to iGaming, which is similar to our offices in Latin America.”

Lazcano says Konami has a directive to help drive iGaming in emerging Latin American markets like Brazil.

Covering the Bases

One of Konami’s missions in recent years has been to create more content that is compatible across its entire game library and all form factors. “As far as bringing more content compatibility across the game library, we can say that is now at a historic high,” says Lazcano. “We have more games than ever available across form factors, and one of the best examples of this is All Aboard, which is one of our biggest games of recent years.”

All Aboard is now available in each of the five Dimension series cabinets. “You’re going to see more games than ever in cabinet form factors that weren’t the ones on which they were originally released,” Lazcano says. “We’ve focused on bringing our most popular content to more form factors. That way, operators can really capitalize on our top-performing games in the best way possible on their casino floor.”

Lazcano says customers have lauded Konami’s recent experiments with silly characters and unique creations. “One example is What the Duck, a comical game in every way, including its name,” she says. “Another is K-Pow Pig, with our flying pig who helps players transform credit prizes for the player, as well as transforming into its superhero identity.”

K-Pow Pig and What the Duck were both released this summer, and both are performing well. The latter features funny animated duck characters in Western garb, interacting with the game by lassoing cash-on-reels symbols in the bonus. K-Pow Pig features a golden pig in a superhero outfit, hosting a hold-and-spin feature.

Both games are available on the Dimension 49 and Dimension 75C cabinets.

New Launches

These games set the stage for several new game launches for Konami at the Global Gaming Expo. Up front is Money in the Bank, with base games Bacon Blvd. and Pay Out West. The core mechanic of this game revolves around a banked credit system, which scales with the player’s chosen denomination and bet level. It’s designed to encourage players to increase their bets as they play, enhancing both excitement and potential rewards.

Randomly during the Hold & Spin feature, a “Shake the Bank” feature can occur, in which credits are “drawn” from the bank to increase cash-on-reels awards. A random “Break the Bank” feature draws all of the credits from the bank and adds them to a random cash-on-reels position, after which the bank resets to the original level.

During the primary game, when up to five gold coins land on the reels, their values may be randomly banked.

Collection pots build player excitement for the hold-and-spin feature, enhanced with “Extra Spin,” which awards a fourth spin in the cycle to extend the feature; or “Big Money/Big Bounty,” which boosts the cash-on-reels awards.

“Once you activate the hold-and-spin feature, the player has a chance to either shake the bank to get about 75 percent of that banked value, or they can break the bank to get the full value added to the coins,” says Andrew Culverson, Konami’s director of product management. “Each hold-and-spin feature will be a little bit different.”

Another new game family to be highlighted at G2E is Broadside Bounty, with base games Spoils of the Sea and Pacific Fortune. “With this game, you have a lot of cash-on-reels happening during the primary game as well as the free games,” Culverson explains.

The primary Cash on Reels feature is triggered when a gold coin lands on reel 1, followed by either another gold coin or a map symbol on reels 2 and 3. If a cannon or treasure chest appears on reel 5, it boosts the action by adding extra coins to the remaining reels, increasing the potential for big wins.

When a cannon lands on the center of the fifth reel with a gold coin or map in Spoils of the Sea, cash-on-reels prizes can duplicate up to three times. In Pacific Fortune, a treasure chest on reel 5 with a gold coin or map can add from one to 14 gold coins to the reels.

The Jackpot Feature is a picking bonus to match three jackpot prizes to win one of four jackpots, including the top Grand progressive.

Another G2E launch is FireDrake, with base games Eternal Realm and Immortal Riches. “These have three metamorphic symbols, cartoony dragons,” says Culverson. “Each one makes a funny noise when they pop out of the eggs to award prizes, multipliers and free games.”

FireDrake is a cash-on-reels game with metamorphic eggs that can trigger free spins, multipliers and cash-on-reels awards. Positions containing fireball symbols can randomly award free games and multipliers. Eggs crack to trigger a free-game round with jackpot symbols added to the reels, accumulating to win one of the jackpots.

“We’ve dropped the Mega, the highest-value progressive, down to $1,000 on this game,” Culverson says. “The reason for that is if you activate that multiplier egg in the prize and win that $1,000, you can actually drop a multiplier on top of that and increase it by that value.”

Branching Out

Since taking over as Konami’s vice president of North American game sales, Chris Rowe has rarely stood still. “I’ve been traveling to HHR markets. I spent some time in Kentucky and New Hampshire, where there are some exciting developments,” Rowe says.

“New Hampshire currently has historical horse racing, but they’re looking to make a move to Class III, which is exciting. I was also in Kansas recently, where there are new developments in HHR.”

Rowe says HHR is very much a vertical on the rise. “Konami has seen success in new and emerging markets, one of those being HHR. Our performance is super solid in historical horse racing venues, and we’ve seen great share in new openings and expansions throughout the United States.

“We’ve also seen some great success in Illinois, which is a market that’s opened within my tenure here at Konami. We’ve spent a good amount of time in the market there, understanding the competitive landscape and what’s working,” Rowe says.

“The VGT market has been super exciting, and another new market entry for us, right around G2E last year. There are more than 30,000 games in the market, so it’s been a controlled market entry for us. It’s been a large-scale technical trial of around 200 machines out there in the market, with a package of our game content that’s performing quite well.”

The Konami Illinois VGT product has been live in the field around seven months. “Based on performance, we’ve added two new games to the pack,” Rowe says. “We’ve also upgraded to ticket-in/ticket-out in that market. We’ve just made those enhancements to the pack, and we expect to see some growth in that market in the coming months.”

Class II is the other new area where Konami is active. “We had a trial partner in the Miccosukee tribe in Florida,” Rowe says. “On the back of that performance, we’ve just launched a cloud implementation of our Class II server, which is going to enable the expansion. Our trial partner helped us get the platform proven and to get our latest content live.

“We’ll make a real push to expand with new implementations of Class II.”

Whether in Class II, HHR, VGTs, online or its traditional Class III markets, Konami is expanding its footprint. “We’ve really tried to invest in expanding markets, and we’re seeing tons of gains in those areas, especially HHR and VGTs in Illinois,” says Lazcano. “Customers are excited about the momentum they’re seeing with our products in those markets.

“Customers are excited that in January, Konami launched real-money online gaming in Mexico for the first time. In April we launched in Europe with real-money online gaming, for the first time in Portugal, and we are on target to land in Brazil before G2E.”

Meanwhile, Konami’s new investments in talent are paying off in the form of high-performing games—in Class III and everywhere else.