Building on the success of the OpenBet™ platform, Orbis, an NDS company, has established a reputation as the pioneering supplier of back office solutions to the world’s leading gaming operators. Last year, with the acquisition of NT Media, a leading games content company, Orbis has been in an improved position to grow along with new market forces in Europe and around the world.

Over the past few years, the emergence of on-line poker and casino games has led to increasing demand for integration into third party systems. Along with these markets, fixed odds games grew in popularity in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. While Orbis developed some front end games, the company’s main focus remained back-end functionality. In order for operators to be able to choose the games content they want, Orbis has provided an open and flexible back office system.

To meet this need, Orbis now combines OpenBet back office solutions with front end Flash-based games content to introduce a variety of compelling and unique gaming opportunities. Examples:

• Poker Dice. A single hand of poker is played with dice. Players try to create the best possible poker hand using up to three rolls of the dice.

• Snapjax. An original fixed odds game that blends elements of the structure of Black Jack with a betting interface similar to Roulette. Players bet against the house on the outcome of a Black Jack hand. Bets are made by chip placement on possible outcomes of each hand.

• Pachinko. A popular Japanese game, Pachinko is a mixture of a pinball and a slot machine. The game uses small steel balls, similar to ball bearings that are triggered through a machine that is like a vertical pinball.

OpenBet Fixed Odds Games Server

The OpenBet Fixed Odds Games Server aids in the development of this new generation of Orbis applications by acting as a flexible middleware system for the integration of games content.

The games server allows operators to select best-of-breed content on a single back-end, with a seamless user experience. As a result, operators now have the ability to provide games from Orbis or a third party supplier.

The server is independent of the front end technology, allowing games developed in Java, Flash or any other technology and across any platform such as the Web, mobile phones and iTV, to be integrated at the transaction level with any existing system. This gives it immediate capability to support many different games.

It can be used to extract play-by-play information for every game and when used in conjunction with the OpenBet marketing modules, enhances campaign and promotions management for functionality such as Freebets.

How it works

Communications between client and server use simple XML over HTTP, allowing connection to any kind of client using any technology. These well known, simple protocols enable ease of integration regardless of architecture, hardware or network type. Additionally there is consistency across all games as there are only three request types from the game client: initialize, play and close. Responses depend on the class of game being played. The simplicity and adaptability of this model is the key to its success.

As the industry’s demand for new gaming applications increases, so does Orbis’s delivery of the integrated gaming solution. Orbis now offers complete front end and back office solutions.

OpenBet comprises seven modules that include Casino and Rake Games (Poker and Backgammon), as well as an increasing portfolio of Fixed Odds Games. Recent innovations in games development include the unique “Top Bar” which allows operators to customize branding, messaging to players, freebet and balance updates, as well as dropdown menus to other games that can be configured at run time. The Top Bar can offer rescalable buttons when using multilingual functionality to allow for different sized character sets and includes game play information and rules, as well as displaying the unique bonus bar which lets players see how close they are to their next bonus. As a standard implementation for all games the Top Bar offers both operators and players access to a wealth of options and information.
Rebranding for other networks

Orbis has recently signed an agreement to provide games for St Minver, Europe’s largest operator of gaming networks. The agreement calls for the initial deployment of nine games, all of which can be rebranded to St Mnivers’ array of different networks.

Because of the simplicity and flexibility of the OpenBet games, they are integrated into the operators’ core system quickly and efficiently. A Flash presentation loads the games and acts as a conduit for server messages. XML over HTTP is used for standard communications which simplifies back office integration. As an example, the Top Bar toolkit enables replacement graphics to be loaded without requiring additional design work by Orbis. The result for the operator is simple and allows quick deployment to customers.

From the initial roots of back office software solutions, Orbis has fostered the migration of traditional gaming to online applications and offers a larger portfolio of products all linked together with the One Account, One Wallet solution.

By developing new games such as Pachinko and Snapjax, as well as the OpenBet Fixed Odds Games Server, Orbis now offers a new world of online gaming possibilities to the marketplace.

For more information:

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