Acres launches app store open to any application for games deploying Foundation CMS

Casino loyalty and technology developer Acres Manufacturing Company is launching its Foundation App Store, the company announced on Wednesday. It is described as “an open-to-all environment” that allows any developer to provide applications for any slot machine or table game deploying Acres’ Foundation casino management system technology.

The Foundation App Store enables casino operators to seamlessly add the newest content from developers through an open API in an effort to quickly address evolving consumer interests, explains a press release.

With the open API, casinos only pay for the cost of the application, not for the interface. Currently, casinos may have to purchase the same interface for each application they want to buy: this obstacle prevents many casinos from installing new applications, according to the company, which ultimately deprives them of incremental revenue and earnings.

Additionally, the Foundation App Store is set to bring to the table another significant difference: the solution allows any app, whether or not it competes with present or future Acres applications, whereas fees are typically charged by legacy systems for any interface with competitive products.

Acres' Foundation App Store.

"The Foundation App Store is a marketplace that enables casinos to select any application they want with the guarantee of security and compatibility," said Noah Acres of Acres Manufacturing. "We are allowing any developer to create content for the Foundation platform by providing our standard API documentation.”

At launch, the Foundation App Store includes 17 developers, with applications tested and certified as Foundation Compatible by Acres. Initial applications encompass a range of categories, such as reporting, analytics, cashless gaming, bonusing, and more.

“This approach is beneficial to developers, casino operators and gaming customers as it will cultivate the newest technologies and content for consumers,” added Noah Acres. “We are confident the enhanced speed of deployment and a broader variety of applications available on the platform will greatly enhance profits for casino operators."

Acres’ Foundation casino management system provides casinos with real-time data from slot machines, and a direct interface to the credit meter on any slot machine. According to the company, it provides venues with over 1000x more data, giving them “dramatic new capabilities” to analyze and influence player behavior.

Through its standard APIs, any application approved by the casino can interface with Foundation, in order to enable advanced data analytics, bonusing, cashless gaming, and other features.

“Legacy casino management systems have closed interfaces that prevent developers from contributing new content,” the company says. “Acres believes this business model has greatly slowed the growth of the industry by restricting casinos' ability to evolve their services to meet consumer demands, which the company believes is a key contributor to the dramatic aging of the casino customer demographic.”

In December, Yogonet carried out an exclusive interview with Noah Acres in which the COO of the company and son of the founder and inventor of casino systems technology, John Acres, discussed the PayAction Sports Bonus. 

Introduced in the last edition of G2E, it uses a live sports data feed to trigger a bonus round on any slot machine connected to Foundation. “The feedback has been pure excitement,” described Noah Acres. The product started deployment in Q1, 2022.

The executive also discussed existing casino loyalty technology in the market, which he calls “extremely old.” “Casinos are stuck using hardware that was designed in the 1990s - literally,” said Acres. “But back in that era storage was expensive, so the legacy systems save on memory by only requesting about 20% of the data a slot machine reports at distant time intervals. In total, this means casinos are collecting less than 1% of their slot data.”