"2019 has been a record-breaking year for team Habanero"

What will be Habanero's focus and highlights at ICE London 2020? 

2019 has been a record-breaking year for team Habanero, both in terms of products and business growth. We’ve been releasing new games and solutions on a monthly basis, all of which have proven to be a hit with our customers and global range of players. We plan to keep that fantastic momentum going at ICE London 2020 to show the gaming industry why we’re one of the fastest rising stars worldwide.

At the show, our stellar team are going to be showcasing our action-packed portfolio of more than 100 HTML5 titles, including slots, table, and video poker games, as well as our wealth of marketing and admin tools featured in our back office, created with the aim of ensuring our international partners can customize their offering according to the specific needs of their customer base. 

Be sure to stop by, we’ve got everything from high-class graphics, pitch-perfect sounds, immersive storylines, and great math models, all designed to be a hit the world over!

What are your key expectations and goals for the show?

ICE has a well-deserved reputation as one of the industry’s leading shows, and each year we return, it gets even bigger and better. It’s always great to catch up with our international partners there, as well as seeing some familiar faces.

I’m sure by the time the week is out, we’ll have introduced plenty more of our industry friends to the amazing world of Habanero. Following some serious investment in resources over the last few years, our portfolio is now bigger and better than ever. It contains games that stand shoulder to shoulder – and in many cases above – the biggest names in the industry.

We are more confident than ever that we have a portfolio of games that are proven performers. They are now at home on any device, in front of any player in whichever market they find themselves in. We’re very much looking forward to showing our games off to the world at ICE and giving visitors a flavor of what they can expect from us over the next 12 months.

Could you share your prospects and outlook for the global gaming industry in 2020, regarding trends, emerging markets, and technologies? 

Latin America is set to be a strong focus for us in the year ahead, just as it is for many global suppliers - and with good reason. The continent’s incredible gaming culture makes it an unmissable opportunity, and I’m confident that our engaging range of immersive titles are going to be as well-loved there as they are the rest of the world over.

In terms of markets, we’re already live with Codere in Mexico, with plenty more deals in the pipeline for Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina that we’ll be announcing soon enough. Our team has also been working tirelessly to prepare our content for regulatory approval with local authorities, which I expect very shortly.

When it comes to technology – it’s going to be all about mobile. The emergence of mobile in markets outside Europe, particularly in emerging markets like LatAm has a whole new level of dominance – having bypassed the desktop entirely as part of its tech jump and going straight to smartphone. With the market becoming increasingly important in terms of global influence in the industry, it’s essential that any operators and suppliers tailor their offerings with mobile-first delivery in mind.

What are your strategies and approach in that sense?

With today’s mobile-first, tech-savvy generation, it’s all about delivering the best when it comes to quality and technology. Players have an unquenchable thirst for the content of the highest quality, and no tolerance for below-par material. Thus, it is vital to maintain a balance of constant churn in brand new games that reach the bar in terms of quality.

Not only that, but content needs to work flawlessly across mobile and desktop, to cater to a global audience. We’ve developed our portfolio in line with the expectations of the new generation of customer in mind; consider ourselves pioneers in the HTML5 and gamification space. On top of that, we’ve also developed a new jackpot solution that I’m sure will do wonders for customer retention for all our operators.