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VANDA CARSON
June 10, 2010
The penny may have dropped for Aristocrats gaming machines.

POKER machine maker Aristocrat is facing a possible threat to its long-held dominance of the local market, with its biggest New South Wales hotel customer considering moving to a rival machine maker.

The chief of listed National Leisure and Gaming, Andrew Jolliffe, yesterday said he was in talks with Aristocrat to replace nearly 100 Aristocrat video poker machines that were just a year old.

Mr Jolliffe said he was considering returning them to Aristocrat under their lease-style system and replacing them with machines from US-based rivals Bally or Aruze, or local rival Len Ainsworth.

While any move by NLG to buy its machines from a rival producer would be minor, it would chip away at Aristocrat's saturation coverage of the Australian market.
But as the largest player in the NSW market, its buying decisions are watched by smaller players. If it defects, other poker machine buyers could follow.

Mr Jolliffe and Aristocrat boss Jamie Odell are nutting out the deal in Macau at Asia's biggest gambling conference.
While the new machines have better graphics, games and screens with more options and features than the older versions, Aristocrat's "generation seven" machines have not been as popular as the decade-old favourites ''Queen of the Nile'' and ''Five Dragons''.

NLG has more than 900 poker machines across 31 NSW hotels. At least 90 per cent are Aristocrat machines. If NLG is wooed by a rival producer, its share would reduce to 80 per cent and could crumble further if the rivals get a foothold in the Australian market.

Mr Odell declined to comment and instead released a statement thorough spokesman Tim Allerton that said the company "continues to work with all our customers in providing quality gaming solutions and values its strong and ongoing relationship with NLG".