Menu

Virtual gaming machine pilot project launched

Categories: Casino news | Published by: The Orb
04/05/2022

New games of chance are incoming!

In Japan, internet giant Google has launched a rather exciting project. In this project, apps can be used to control so-called pokie machines. Real online pokies are transmitted to the app via a video stream. If players manage to fish out one of the prizes with the gripper arm, they receive the prize by post. We are talking about a whole new form of live gambling.

So far, only a pilot project for the Japanese market

So-called grab machines are trendy in Japan and also in the USA. Moreover, every major amusement park has a large arcade facility with not just one of these machines but often hundreds. Therefore, it is understandable that Google is first trying out the project in one of the markets where the pieces are also going through the roof offline.

On a page for developers, Google provides information on how the apps that control the vending machines have to be equipped. Google is also working with the Japanese government so that the gaming offers to comply with gambling laws. In the meantime, the first offers can already be found in the Google Playstore. Customers from Japan are offered their own category here. It goes by the name of Arcade.

New Type of gambling

This development is significant because we talk about a new kind of live gambling without moderation. Like a live casino, in which the roulette wheel and roulette table are transmitted via video streams, the apps communicate the camera angles of the gripping machines. The only sticking point we see with these offers is in the sending of the prizes.

Here, there is a danger that dubious providers will make a killing by charging exorbitantly high shipping costs that bear no relation to the profits. So Google will have to find a way to weed out black sheep early on. At the same time, if you consider that Google rebelled for a long time against making gambling apps available in its app store at all, this is quite an exciting development. It remains to be seen how competitor Apple will follow suit.