Play Meter

PLA Y METER: Has olid state technology. in your
opinion. led to an increase or decrease in downtime?
MENDELSOHN: An increa e in downtime initially.
I do think. however, that in the long run it will
cau e u all a decrease in downtime.
PLA Y METER: Do you have any figures which lead
you to the conclusion that solid state technology has
increased downtime?
MENDELSOHN: We have developed a service
ratio for each type of game which is actually a ratio
of how many calls we get on a game to how much
money that type of game makes. Right now, out of
all our games-and that includes mechanical
pin balls, digital pin balls, video games, wall games,
and arcade pieces- digital pinballs have the worst
ratio of service to revenue.
PLAY METER: How did you come up with that
ratio?
MENDELSOHN: It's a two-step formula. First,
you take the amount of service calls for a month on
each type of machine and divide that by the number
of those kinds of games that you have on your
route. Then, in the second step, you divide that
figure by the average amount of revenue that type
of game generates for you each month. For
instance, if you have a hundred ' digital pinball
machines and you have 75 service calls per month,
your figure after the first step would be .75. Then
you take that. 75 and divide that by your average
hare of the take on digital pinball machines for the
month. Let's say that figure is $125, that means you
divide .75 by 12.5. Actually, we should be dividing
by 125, but we reduce that figure to only a tenth so
that we don't have too many decimal points. So, for
the purpose of our ratio, 125 becomes 12.5. The
result is a ratio of the amount of service to how
often that type of game is played. Now this ratio
obviously doesn't show how often the game is being
played; it's not intended to do that. It doesn't give
us a total financial picture of that machine but
rather a service picture of the machine. After all, a
game could have a poor service ratio and still be a
good earner since the more often the game is
played , the more often it will break down.
•
cOin
operated
~~ystems
•
•
•
•
•
Coi n Meters
Coin Chutes
Locks
Timers
Rotary
Switches
• Custom
Designs
PLAY METER: And using this formula, you have
found that digital pinballs have the highest ratio of
service to revenue?
MENDELSOHN: Yes, but you have to bear in mind
that you have increased earnings with digital
pinballs. You have to ' weigh -all this into
consideration. Digital pinballs may have the highest
ratio, but they are also the most played. Digital
pin balls have increased our revenue by twenty-five
to thirty percent. This ratio only gives the service
picture of the machine, not its financial picture.
PLAY METER: Could you give us an example of
what those ratios have been for you?
MENDELSOHN: For this past month, for instance,
digital pinballs had a ratio of .15; mechanical
pinballs, .10; video games, .06; and arcade pieces,
.02. You'll note that the higher the number, the
worse the ratio of service calls per machine. By the
PLAY METER , July, 1978
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