The truth about the future of MG was literally on the wall when they launched their Quickfire platform in 2010. From the beginning, the architecture was intended to allow them to host virtually any game. Back then I had contacts in the company and asked them ... "well, I wonder how long will it take before you will have other companies doing the slots and you reduce yourselves to manage the content?" ... simply because it's easy money. I didn't get an answer, so I knew that was the plan.
We should not forget, MG is making unbelievable amounts of money with just a handful of their games: Mega Moolah series, IR and TSII.
Their name still pulls the crowds and hardly any regulated casino dares to go without them, so, all they need to do is have mesmerizing shows at the industry conferences to convince the operators that they are still "the brand".
The majority of players are not the "hardcore" community that we are, nor have they experienced what MG was one day, or have played their games on the Viper client. To them, entertainment, colours, fancy animations etc count more than how a game actually performs. Where we slot nerds can tell the difference, the "newbies" simply don't know. And there are daily 10,000s of newbies signing up worldwide.
A few words to the partner studios. Most of them have been founded by ex-employees of the big boys as they decided that they want to have a bigger piece of the massive pie that is "online gaming" today. So they approached some colleagues/friends or even people employed at competitors etc and set-up shop....very small shop that is and they all hope to be the next NetEnt, Quickspin, Play'n GO etc. Now, to get off the ground to earn some income you need some games quickly, something that is relatively easy to design, uncomplicated math model etc. The result is the drivel we see surfacing on Quickfire for the last years.
And because the money is still rolling in big time, MG got so lazy that they didn't even bother to design a common game interface nor a proper one for their HMTL5 conversion. Coincidentally, I set up some game pages for Microgaming yesterday and was flabbergasted when I loaded some of the older titles in demo mode to get a screenshot for the pages. Below are some examples.
How long will they be able to sustain this course? I don't know but it IMO it is a sure way into irrelevance, whether it will take 3 years or 5 years. They are lucky that they were the backbone of 200+ Viper casinos and that legacy still carries them today. But even hardcore MG casinos like
32RED have started to diversify which automatically leads to less revenue for MG.
My reviews for their latest games regularly trash MG and I have been contacted already a few times to explain myself. It's gotten so bad that I do not receive demo links/promo material anymore whereas in the past I had direct connections in the required departments. Not that I care because the games are simply atrocious. Just reviewed Jungle Jim and the Lost Sphinx yesterday and all they did is increase the game window to 5x5 and put some more multipliers into the gameplay. That, ladies and gents, is what MG can come up with in 2 years since they released the original. Truly sad.
Thunderstruck - Thor has been castrated
Mermaids Millions - the mermaids are crying
