AGI - A Few Thoughts, page-54

I have to say that is not a bad looking cabinet and not something I thought AGI would be capable of. Thanks for the pic. Still you need much more than a new cabinet to succeed in the pokie machine business.

It will be interesting to see how their games perform in this AStar cabinet. I understand that their last cabinet is only a few years old so I still think many Australian customers will be reluctant to purchase AStar cabinets just because it is new and shiny. Someone told me that players play games not cabinets. In general I think AGI will initially encounter strong push back from customers to purchase AStar--particularly those that have invested in EVO and 600s--unless AGI does something to radically improve the performance of their EVO and 600 games (i.e., offer customers yet more games). The CEO even suggested at the AGM that relationships with major Australian corporate customers were strained (I think the CEO said they sold no machines to corporates) so it will be interesting to see how those customers respond to AStar. I'm really curious to hear more about what AGI's strategy is going to be for managing the release of their new games for AStar and what their plans are for managing support for their older cabinets. The reason I mention this is that I assume this will require more games and does AGI have the resources to produce more quality games? What I'm saying is that I have serious reservations that we will see AStar contribute anything meaningful to their second half results (more specifically out of Australia, which has been a basket case for many many years) because I think initially they will be giving away lots of free games and maybe heavy discounting on the AStar by way of trade-ins to fix up the sins of the past 5/6 years and repair relationships. Actually, I haven't seen any news as to when AStar is for sale in Australia so that may also impact their second half results.

Anyway, this new AStar cabinet seems like a step in the right direction and long overdue but their are so many other variables that AGI will need to get right, the big one being games, if they are to regain any credibility. I can't wait to see how these new cabinets perform in Australia and how they stack up against their rivals.

Hey, the release of AStar has at least caused me to move my sentiment from sell to none so surely that's a vote of confidence. If early game performance in Australia is positive then who knows it could just be the trigger to cause me to put my money where my mouth is and go long. Maybe we might just see some serious competition in the Australian market.