WMS Gaming is a manufacturer of

slot machine A slot machine (American English), fruit machine (British English) or poker machine (Australian English and New Zealand English) is a gambling machine that creates a game of chance for its customers. Slot machines are also known pejoratively a ...

video lottery terminal A video lottery terminal (VLT), also sometimes known as a video gaming terminal (VGT), video slots, or the video lottery, is a type of electronic gambling machine. They are typically operated by a region's lottery, and situated at licensed establis ...

s and software to help

casino A casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live entertai ...

s manage their gaming operations. It also offers online and mobile games. WMS was originally a subsidiary of

WMS Industries WMS Industries, Inc. was an American electronic gaming and amusement manufacturer in Enterprise, Nevada. It was merged into Scientific Games in 2016. WMS's predecessor was the Williams Manufacturing Company, founded in 1943 by Harry E. Williams ...

, which became a wholly owned subsidiary of

Scientific Games Corporation Light & Wonder, Inc., formerly Scientific Games Corporation (SG), is an American corporation that provides gambling products and services. The company is headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada. Light & Wonder's gaming division provides products such ...

in 2013. WMS entered the reel-spinning slot machine market in 1994, and in 1996, it introduced its first hit casino slot machine, ''Reel 'em In'', a "multi-line, multi-coin secondary bonus" video slot machine. It followed this with a number of similar games like ''Jackpot Party'', ''Boom'' and ''Filthy Rich''. By 2001, it introduced its ''

Monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...

''-themed series of "participation" slots. Since then, WMS Gaming has continued to obtain licenses to manufacture gaming machines using several additional famous brands. The company continues to sell gaming machines and to market its participation games.

History

WMS Gaming was founded as a subsidiary of

, whose roots date back to the 1943 founding of Williams Manufacturing Company. Over the last decades of the 20th century, Williams produced popular

pinball Pinball games are a family of games in which a ball is propelled into a specially designed table where it bounces off various obstacles, scoring points either en route or when it comes to rest. Historically the board was studded with nails call ...

machines and video arcade games. By 1996, WMS had transferred its video game library to its video game subsidiary,

Midway Games Midway Games Inc., known previously as Midway Manufacturing and Bally Midway, and commonly known as simply Midway, was an American video game developer and publisher. Midway's franchises included ''Mortal Kombat'', ''Rampage (series), Rampage'' ...

, which it took public and finally spun off in the late 1990s. With the rapid decline of the arcade industry in the 1990s, the company's pinball business became unprofitable, and WMS discontinued the pinball line in 2000. Meanwhile, in 1991, WMS created a new division, Williams Gaming, to enter the gaming and state video lottery markets, developing and releasing its first

s for the

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

market in 1992. Williams Gaming entered the reel-spinning

market in 1994, but the company's video gaming roots ultimately would prove to be its strength when, in 1996, it introduced its first hit casino slot machine, ''Reel 'em In'', a "multi-line, multi-coin secondary bonus" video slot machine. WMS followed this with a number of similar successful games like ''Jackpot Party'', ''Boom'' and ''Filthy Rich''. During the 1990s, the gaming industry grew as additional states permitted casino gambling and video lottery games, and as Native American tribes built gaming casinos. The division was incorporated as WMS Gaming in 1999 and has since focused exclusively on the manufacture, sale, leasing, licensing and management of gaming machines. In 2001, a glitch was uncovered in the company's software that allowed players to earn credits on some machines without paying for them. The industry leader IGT also sued WMS for patent infringement related to its reel-spinning games, winning a judgment that required WMS to limit the flexibility of its line of reel-spinning games. WMS Gaming's new video operating platform, CPU-NXT, debuted in 2003. It employed a faster, more

open architecture Open architecture is a type of computer architecture or software architecture intended to make adding, upgrading, and swapping components with other computers easy. For example, the IBM PC, Amiga 500 and Apple IIe have an open architecture support ...

that took advantage of the economies of scale enjoyed by

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

and other PC component vendors. The slot machine platform is based on the

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

operating system, initially ran on an Intel

Pentium III The Pentium III (marketed as Intel Pentium III Processor, informally PIII or P3) brand refers to Intel's 32-bit x86 desktop and mobile CPUs based on the sixth-generation P6 microarchitecture introduced on February 28, 1999. The brand's initial p ...

processor and was the first to use

flash memory Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both us ...

rather than erasable programmable read only memory. By 2001, WMS introduced its very successful ''

''-themed series of "participation" slots, which the company licenses or leases to casinos, instead of selling the games to the casinos. The company's subsequent participation games have included machines based on well-known entertainment-related brands as ''

Men in Black In popular culture and UFO conspiracy theories, men in black (MIB) are purported men dressed in black suits who claim to be quasi- government agents, who harass, threaten, or sometimes even assassinate unidentified flying object (UFO) witnesse ...

'', ''

Hollywood Squares ''Hollywood Squares'' (originally ''The Hollywood Squares'') is an American game show in which two contestants compete in a game of tic-tac-toe to win cash and prizes. The show piloted on NBC in 1965 and the regular series debuted in 1966 on the ...

'', '' The Wizard of Oz'', ''

Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...

'', ''

The Lord of the Rings ''The Lord of the Rings'' is an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some time in the distant past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's boo ...

'' and ''

Clue Clue may refer to: People with the name * DJ Clue (born 1975), mixtape DJ * Arthur Clues (1924–1998), Australian rugby league footballer * Ivan Clues * Tim Cluess Arts, entertainment, and media ''Clue'' entertainment franchise * ''Cluedo ...

''. Some of these games are networked within casinos and even between multiple casinos so that players have a chance to win large jackpots based on the number of machines in the network. These branded games proved popular with players and profitable for WMS, as the net licensing revenues and lease fees generated by each game have exceeded the profit margins of its games for sale.WMS Annual Report for Fiscal 2010
(ending June 30, 2010) filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 26, 2010Annual Report for Fiscal 2011
WMS Annual Reports, WMS Investor Relations pages, September 29, 2011 The company's revenues grew to a high of $783.3million in 2011, but they decreased to $689.7million in 2012.
(ending June 30, 2013) filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 29, 2013 WMS Gaming's parent, WMS Industries, merged with

Scientific Games Light & Wonder, Inc., formerly Scientific Games Corporation (SG), is an American corporation that provides gambling products and services. The company is headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada. Light & Wonder's gaming division provides products such ...

in October 2013, becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Scientific Games. Scientific Games paid $1.5 billion for WMS, and WMS shareholders received $26.00 per share. At the time of the merger, the company's stock ceased trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Products, technology, business

WMS Gaming's products have helped to move the industry trend away from generic mechanical slot machines and toward games that incorporate familiar

intellectual properties Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, cop ...

and more creative ways to pay off. For more than a century beginning in the late 1800s, mechanical slot machine reels employed limited themes: card suits, horseshoes, bells and stars, varieties of fruit, black bars and the Liberty Bell. WMS's 1996 video slot machine ''Reel 'em In'', introduced multi-line and multi-coin secondary bonus pay-outs. Later, the company's licensed themes, beginning with ''

'', helped to greatly expand its sales and profits. Some of WMS Gaming's product designs reflect the changing demographics of its industry. Younger players raised on

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

s often seek more challenging experiences, both physical and mental, than do women age 55 to 65 – the traditional audience for slot machines. Accordingly, some of the company's machines incorporate surround sound, flat-panel display screens and animated, full-color images. The company also manufactures the G+ series of video reel slots, the Community Gaming family of interconnected slots, as well as mechanical reels,

poker games The card game of poker has many variations, most of which were created in the United States in the mid-1800s through the early 1900s. The standard order of play applies to most of these games, but to fully specify a poker game requires details ...

, and

s. WMS began to offer online gaming in 2010 to persons over 18 years old in the UK and in 2011 in the US at www.jackpotparty.com. In 2012, WMS partnered with

Large Animal Games Large Animal Games was an independent casual game developer, known for their game ''Color Zen''. The company was founded in New York City, New York during 2001 by Wade Tinney and Josh Welber, and Large Animal Games released over 100 games for a va ...

to incorporate several of WMS's slot machine games into a cruise ship-themed Facebook game application titled "Lucky Cruise". By playing games and enlisting Facebook friends' help, players can accumulate "lucky charms" (instead of money). The game play is similar to playing a slot machine but includes a "light strategy component".Green, Marian
"A matter of persistence…"
Casino Journal.com, June 1, 2012 In 2012, after experiencing a decline in revenues from the contracting casino market, the company introduced gaming on mobile devices and focused its efforts on expanding its online game offerings. For casinos, it introduced ''My Poker'' video poker games. WMS Gaming technologies include: * Transmissive Reels gaming platform, which employs video animation that is displayed around, over and seemingly interactively with mechanical reels. The technology is based on the CPU-NXT2 operating platform. * Operating platforms. CPU-NXT2 operating platform, which incorporates an Intel Pentium IV class processor, up to 2 gigabytes of

random-access memory Random-access memory (RAM; ) is a form of computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working Data (computing), data and machine code. A Random access, random-access memory device allows data items to b ...

, an

ATI Ati or ATI may refer to: * Ati people, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines **Ati language (Philippines), the language spoken by this people group ** Ati-Atihan festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines *Ati language (China), a ...

3-D graphics chip-set, and a 40 gigabyte

hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

, is used in most of the games. The CPU-NXT3 operating platform was introduced in 2012 for participation games and new cabinets. * Cabinets: The Bluebird2 gaming cabinet, which includes a dual 22-inch

wide screen Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratios (relationship of image width to height) used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than t ...

, high-definition displays,

Bose Bose may refer to: * Bose (crater), a lunar crater * ''Bose'' (film), a 2004 Indian Tamil film starring Srikanth and Sneha * Bose (surname), a surname (and list of people with the name) * Bose, Italy, a ''frazioni'' in Magnano, Province of Biella ...

speakers, and an illuminated printer and

bill acceptor A currency detector or currency validator is a device that determines whether notes or coins are genuine or counterfeit. These devices are used in a wide range of automated machines, such as retail kiosks, supermarket self checkout machines, ...

, was introduced in 2008. The Blade and Gamefield xD cabinets were introduced in 2013. Approximately 70% of WMS's revenues are derived from U.S. customers. Its corporate office and manufacturing facilities are in

Las Vegas, Nevada Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...

. It has other development, sales and field services offices across the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and international development and distribution facilities located in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, China, India, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain and the United Kingdom and an online gaming center in Belgium.

References

{{reflist

External links

WMS official site
Slot machine manufacturers Companies based in Chicago