Play Meter

sTATE OF THE INDUSTRY Industry Vital Statistics Industry Gross $9 billion Video games on location 1.2 million Average video Weekly Gross dedicated kit $89 $69 Locations arcades street 11,000 328,000 New game purchases 450,000 Games on location 2.5 million Lite a Line ••• Your Prof!ls Will Roll w!lh Multiple-Coin & Bonus Play! t1 ' Watch For Our New Generation ... ~ 'Twenty-One" & ''Pokereno" ;r )Ill"' {p~ ~# 8436 Washington Place NE Albuquerque, NM 87113 (505) 821 -6878 FAA (505) 821-6876 operators found 40% to 60% of their revenues in gray area games. We asked operators if the games proliferated in their states and close to 60% answered that they were. The collections on these machines are hard, if not impossible, to ignore. While we have excluded this lucrative equipment from the industry totals in the past, this year it seemed appropriate to include the numbers. In fact, the revenues being generated from these games is so substantial that it can interfere in efforts to campaign for legalized video gaming. While we hate to keep dragging Oregon into every video lottery conversation, the fact is that operators there took a significant chance on doing their own campaigning against gray area games, on the assumption that when video lottery terminals were installed the income would be there once again. It didn't happen and more than likely there's not an operator there who wouldn't welcome back his gray area games and their revenue. To the question, "Is your state working to legalize video gaming?" close to 80% said they were. Of that number 15% said they were just getting started. Last year 69% were involved in a plan to legalize the machines. Surprisingly, with the attention on gray area games, fewer operators claimed that a ban on them would hurt their businesses (23% compared to 38% last year). It's interesting to note that 53% of the responding operators think there is too much emphasis on a push to legalize video gaming. VIDEO GAMES Here's our pet subject for the year: what did happen with video games? We saw a trend beginning to emerge during the ACME show in March and saw it continue through to the AMOA in the fallbigger, more elaborate, high-tech virtual reality games. Although