It has been almost a year since the first Aurora cabinets entered the UK’s adult gaming centres market and in that time they have made a major impact on the sector.

Aurora

“Aurora has been a sensation, the like of which we have never seen before,” said Simon Barff, managing director of Blueprint Machines. “The ground-breaking design and the clarity and enhancement of game play that the 27ins HD monitors have brought to the games and player experience is incredible. “We have seen players moving from old favourite cabinets to play their preferred game on the larger, brighter screens. Immediate player acceptance and attraction has seen the ongoing delivery on increasing income, which has led to an ever-expanding base of the Aurora across this sector. We have over 1,000 units on site to date.”

Andy Whitworth, head of gaming strategy at leading operator Talarius, said: “The Aurora is the most exciting new B3 on the market, with its stunning presentation and mix of key content, our customers have flocked to them.” The added attraction for AGCs is the fact that Blueprint Machines is sourcing the best content not only from within the Gauselmann Group, but also from third parties to ensure the highest quality B3 content. This includes titles such as the all-time classic from Ace Gaming, Monkey Business Gold, being released this month after positive testing. “The success of the cabinet as a vehicle for the B3 content has also led to many of our customers now adopting the Aurora cabinet to house their Cat C Blueprint compendiums, with the Titan AGC menu proving to be our most successful menu to date,” said Andy Hall, operations director at Blueprint Machines.

Mike Armstrong from Leeds independent Teddy’s Amusements said: “It’s refreshing to have a product with access to so much varied content, backed up by such great performance.”

Other menus being released into this cabinet now include the three new standalone menus: Hot Pots, bringing a unique six-game menu linked to live pots, Hot Gems, a compendium of the classic Spin to Win games and Titan Hard, which brings into play a menu style driven by Eastern European, high-percentage payout fruit-style games. Along with these menus, Blueprint has just started testing the latest edition to its Cat C (AWP machines) community family: Community Cash Vault. Building on the success of Wish upon a Bonus and Rainbows Gold, Community Cash Vault has four newly themed games with a unique bonus wheel feature delivering additional wins, bonus spins and community access. The positive influence of Aurora is also spreading into the pub sector. “We are already seeing the cabinet delivering more than a 20 per cent increase in cash box from the same King of Games compendium housed in the Genie cabinet,” said Barff. “Understandably this is resulting in a great deal of interest from the retail sector as King of Games is already the market leader in the digital Cat C arena.”

Blueprint Machines and Blueprint Gaming moved into new headquarters in Newark, UK, in March to cope with the rapid growth in the UK. The new headquarters cover 10,000sq.ft, double the size of the old premises, reflecting the continued expansion of the Gauselmann Group in the UK and of Blueprint in particular.