Novomatic

About Novomatic

Novomatic is one of the casino industry’s oldest gambling companies as it was founded all the way back in 1980. Since then they have expanded to more than 30000 employees spread over offices in more than 50 different countries. They have opened several land based casinos and have long been considered to be the market leading company for gaming solutions within this type of gambling.

It’s not only slots that Novomatic create, but they are involved in a huge number of business areas. In addition to being a provider of table games, lotteries and platforms for sportsbook, they offer management systems such as cash administration. They market themselves as a one stop solution provider covering the entire spectrum of gambling.

Even though a land based casino focus is what has made Novomatic the multi-billion dollar turn over company they are today, the online casino industry hasn’t passed them by unnoticed. Over the years they’ve created more than 300 different online slots and released a couple of online games that have become incredibly popular, such as the famous Book of Ra series.

Slot games

When it comes to Novomatic’s slots, they certainly aren’t the most modern ones, which probably is a result of their main focus being land based casino. Many of their games have very simple designs and in a lot of them you will find the exact same type of old school casino sounds. This is actually a unique characteristic that makes it easy to recognize many of their slots.

As simplicity is a common theme among their releases, you will rarely find any flashy animations or visually impressive backgrounds. Symbols can be detailed, but low paying ones are almost always of the same traditional card icons (10, J, Q, K and A), if not represented by fruits. The reel design is also quite simple in most games as this rarely deviates from the commonly used 5 reel, 3 row format.

Feature wise, many of their slots revolve around free spin rounds that either have a win multiplier to them or an expanding symbol. A great example of this is their Book of Ra series which is an incredibly popular line of slots. These games have in fact been such a great success that the slot provider Play’n Go more or less copied them when they created their famous Book of Dead game.

Not all of Novomatic’s releases follow the same simplicity, but some slots do actually have a more modern touch with upgraded graphics and quite interesting bonus features. From Dusk Till Dawn is one example of this. But even though the design is modernized it is, however, nowhere close to the level of quality that we see from NetEnt, Yggdrasil and many other first class online slot providers.

If you haven’t already explored all of Novomatic’s games and would like to get a glimpse of what the majority of Novomatic fans love to play, you should check out the following slots:

• Book of Ra classic
• Book of Ra deluxe
• Book of Ra deluxe 6
• Dolphin’s pearl
• Lucky Lady’s Charm
• Captain Venture

Target audience

With more than 300 slots to choose from, Novomatic has something that fit most type of gamblers. They are most famous for their high volatile games such as Book of Ra, but they have plenty of low and medium volatile once as well. What this means is that you can easily find slots that will pay you frequently but have a limited maximum win, and just as easily find slots that can pay huge amounts but with winnings being harder to get.

Even though the volatility level speaks to everyone, it should be mentioned that most of Novomatic’s games are targeted to players who appreciate quite a simple slot experience. We don’t know if this is intentional or not, but as previously mentioned the game designs are usually not that modern and features are often limited to just free spins.

History

Behind the multi-billion dollar success of today’s Novomatic is a long and rich history. The company was founded in 1980 by the Austrian Johann Graf and since then numerous land based casinos have been opened by them and more than 25 different companies acquired.

Their original business model was to create gambling machines. This was a huge hit as the company quickly expanded to Germany, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Not only that, but after just a few years they had offices in several other parts of the world as well.

In 1984 they developed a hardware platform which was the basis for state-of-the-art slot machines. Their first land based casino was opened in Switzerland in 1989, which was fairly quickly followed by another land based casino opening in the Czech Republic in 1991.

Another hardware platform was developed in 1994 to improve the standards of gambling machines and in 1997 yet another upgrade was made. This one served as a basis for the very first multi-player games at land based casinos. With the help of electronics, up to 250 players were able to enjoy a game of roulette at the same time, which solved the limits that real roulette tables had.

In 1998 Novomatic expanded their land based casinos by opening a new one in Germany and in 2000 this was followed by yet another one at the airport of Frankfurt. By 2001, Novomatic’s products were a part of the majority of land based casinos in Europe and in several land based casinos in other parts of the world.

They opened yet another land based casino in 2004, which is located in Hungary and in 2005 they also opened one in Austria. Their casino openings continued in 2008 and 2009 as two more were opened in Chile and Slovenia.

In 2010 a subsidiary company of lottery solutions was founded and by 2013 more than 30000 video lottery machines had been distributed in Italy and Romania. They had also bought 90% of the shares of the market leading company in online lottery solutions in Iceland.

The yearly gambling conference ICE was taken by storm in 2015 as Novomatic had created the largest booth that any gaming show had ever seen (4500 sqm). This was followed by two more land based casino openings; one in Spain 2016 and one in Croatia 2017.

A part from everything already mentioned, there have been a lot of other milestones for Novomatic. This includes getting gaming licenses all around the world, acquiring several companies and receiving various awards. The company has been a fast moving one with a steady growth and whether you’re a land based casino enthusiast or an online casino player it’s going to be exciting to see what the future of Novomatic will bring.