Gaming machine supplier Aristocrat Leisure says it has been too slow in getting into some parts of the gaming market, such as US-style “entertainment” games.

Aristocrat chief executive Jamie Odell says most of Aristocrat’s big markets are fairly stagnant, so the company has to increase its market share.

“We have been too slow in getting into a number of emerging gaming segments, where we need to get into quickly, and they will help us to grow share overall,” Mr Odell said during a market briefing on Thursday.

Aristocrat chief product officer Rich Schneider said Aristocrat did not currently participate in the big global market segment of US-style entertainment games.

Entertainment video slot games, such as Sky Rider, had “more things going on”: more noise, more lights, more teasers, more drama and more high-quality onscreen artwork.

These games started in the US in the late 1990s, but were now a huge growth segment in Asia, and were also growing in popularity in Australia.

In the US, about half of the 400,000 video slot machines were “entertainment” units.

“We currently don’t ship a single product into this space,” Mr Schneider said.

“So half the US video (gaming) market is virgin to us.

“To my point of thinking, the video space is the single greatest opportunity for share-taking that exists.”

Mr Schneider said Aristocrat had been recruiting game designers who were expert in this area and expected to start delivering entertainment games towards the end of 2013.

Mr Odell said Aristocrat had been held back from creating US-style entertainment games before now because Aristocrat’s designers had found them “boring”.

“The guys who made great Aristocrat games for 20 years want to go out and win money or lose money. A good night out is not spending half an hour to win or lose 25 bucks,” Mr Odell said.