Slot Machines Leaving Casinos

Whenever I walk into a casino I’m greeted by hundreds of slot machines. When I went to G2E much of the gaming area of the convention seemed to be taken up by new slot machines. However, slot machines are actually leaving the casino floor.

The number of slot machines (in Nevada) fell from 165,995 to 158,788 in the past year

To go along with the number of slot machines decreasing so have revenues. There is a shift in non-table gaming happening right now at casinos. Older slot machines are making way for newer games and all of those games aren’t slot machines.

Some of the new games taking over for slot machines are electronic table games like the Shoot To Win Craps machine pictured above from Aruze Gaming. This is just one of a series of G-Machine games I’ve seen appearing in casinos more and more often. The blackjack games have been around for a while but the Big Wheel game seems to be growing in popularity. I even saw people playing it for the first time at Planet Hollywood this weekend.

These games take up a good amount of space on each casino floor and probably replace around 8-12 games. If these games really are increasing in popularity we can expect to see more of them. These games probably won’t replace too many older reel slot machines because the old white-haired ladies like them and they make up the majority of slot machine players. Rather, we’ll probably see less variety in new slot machines. Boo.

Photo: Vegas Inc.