Player Tracking Pros and Cons of Bally, IGT, Konami, Aristocrat?

[H3x4d3c1m4l]

 First post! (to keep my new account alive ...forever!)

 Anyone have any comments pros and cons of the most common Player Tracking systems? We are moving from an obscure system to one of the more common systems so either Bally, IGT, Konami or Aristocrat.

 To make it even more complicated we've always had two separate systems one for machine control (also obscure) and one for Player Tracking. The plan is to be normal and use just one system for everything. We even want to have our POS system for food to be integrated which for nearly ten years has not, everything on little pieces of paper! Even horse racing if we can tie it into that too for getting points when betting on horse racing.

 If anyone has some comments on a single system or even better if you've used more than one systems I'd love to hear your comments good or bad, pros and cons. Even things other than slot hardware too such things as running reports by audit and slot managers.

[knagl]

Welcome to the site!

 

I won't speak for everyone, but most (but not all) of the folks here are home hobbyists who own one or more machines for personal entertainment.  There aren't a lot of folks here who are actual casino technicians, although there are a handful.  To that end, I do encourage you to hang around here as we can certainly learn from your experience on the casino floor, and you never know what tidbits you might pick up from some of us, as well.

I'll also point you to SlotTechForum.com which has a much larger community of active casino slot techs.  They might be better suited to answer your particular player tracking question based on their experience in live casinos.

Again, welcome to the site.

[a69mopar]

  We are moving from an obscure system to one of the more common systems so either Bally, IGT, Konami or Aristocrat.

Hi, Welcome aboard.  What casino are you with, or what area?  I suggest that you fill out your profile.
My guess is that you will hear good things about the Bally and Konami systems.

Thanks,
Wayne

[TZtech]

Welcome to NLG

I see You already got some responses on slottechforum - Here are my experiences with Bally (Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my employer)

Have just returned from the 6th Bally install - Our group is in the process of converting all our casinos to Bally. Previously we were on a locally produced system with our flagship casino having used crystal web hardware with Aristocrat back end.
Our smaller operations are using MC350 with EPI hadware while our flagship unit is using IView/DMK.

Unlike USA casinos we are not using TITO - We use mag cards to identify players and his/her funds are the accessed from the database and transferred to EGM via EFT/AFT or ASP.

Hardware
We are using MC350's with EPI displays. Hardware seems to be pretty solid - The VFD display is small but nice and bright compared to LCD displays. Keypads seem pretty solid.
Using ID Tech mag card readers with USB interface and have had some issues with these. The MC350's talk to the bally backend via a standard ethernet cable/switch infrastructure.

IViews also seems to be OK  - time will tell how reliable the touchscreens are. We did have several issues with DMK (DMK uses the EGM ineterface as the system display/interface).
With IView/DMK there is a lot of hadware that needs to be fitted.

SDS
The reporting back end so far has worked well for us. Reporting is pretty good and reports can be viewed /saved in PDF,XLS or txt format.

Overall I have no issues with the system and in terms of hardware reliability its a major improvement over our previous system.
There is of course much more to the entire system than mentioned here - PM me for any additional questions.

[ChizzleMonkey]

I think that what the original poster is asking is what backend system do you experienced gamblers prefer? I will say from experience that Konami's system is nice. Bally's lack support. IGT's is blooming. Aristocrat's is going nowhere fast. Just my opinion though.