As TAB-Austria celebrates 10 years since the launch of its touchscreen terminal, David Snook looks back on its development...

It has been a year of anniversaries for one of Austria’s most reputable companies.

TAB-Austria celebrated 45 years of service to the international coin machine community in 2006 and this year posted the 10th anniversary of its best-known product, the Silverball touchscreen game.

In the 20 years that I have known the company, TAB has, like everyone else supplying our industry, enjoyed high notes and lamented low points, but it has always displayed a degree of integrity which has shone through even the bad times.

Worldwide respect

It cannot be argued that the company - and the Dattl family which is its backbone - is immensely respected around the world.

The reason for that is a combination of many things: it makes extremely good products, sells them honestly, supports them right to the smallest detail and, even in the midst of its most successful period in its history, remains loyal to its most modest customers.

Silverball actually has its roots in 1995 when it was tested in Upper Austria - the company is based near Linz. Its success took even Siegfried Dattl, the founder of the company and father of today’s managing director - also Siegfried but known by most in the industry simply as Siggy - by surprise.

They took back the samples, reworked them to refine them still further and then let the international industry take a look at them at the 1996 trade shows.

Their determination to get it totally right meant that it was to be another year before full-scale marketing of the Silverball began.

This determination to get it right is a passion - perhaps an obsession - with TAB, which tests everything to destruction and listens hard to what customers say before finalising its offering to the industry. 

Silverball launch

When it did appear in 1997 in its final form, Silverball had 13 games to offer and was available in five different languages.

In those early days, TAB had just three software engineers on the payroll; today there are more than 30.

But TAB was around long before the Silverball concept was first examined. Until 1992 Siegfried Dattl, Snr, was an operator of gaming machines in Upper Austria, with a route of about 2,000-3,000 machines. 

He also made the games, mostly poker terminals, and sold them to the export market where Yugoslavia was Dattl’s best market. Inside three years he had sold 20,000 poker games before conflict in the Balkans interrupted trade.

But for Siegfried Dattl that export success had given him the resources to develop his manufacturing business further and in 1993 TAB produced Quizzard, the forerunner to Silverball. 

One update on Quizzard was produced each year until the launch of Silverball actually worked against Quizzard - but its games live on, as part of the rich inventory of games that are available in Silverball.

TAB-Austria has always been predominantly a European supplier, but that domination has gradually eroded over the years. Europe remains its strongest market but the rest of the world has gradually come to demand the TAB product.

Expansion

However, in 1997 exports meant Germany, Switzerland and Italy, Austria’s surrounding countries and they provided the platform from which the company was to expand.
 
The highest quantities for Europe ever produced by TAB came in 2000 and 2001 and, while Europe remains strong, there are many other countries where it is familiar.

The 1997 decisions which were to set TAB on to its course of international participation were taken by Siegfried and Siggy, who was by then having more and more influence on the way the company was expanding.

They sought a trivia game which at that time had the working title Route 66, or what was to become Silverball as an alternative. Weighing up both products, Siegfried chose to go with Silverball. The rest, as they say, is history. 

Siggy Dattl, now coming up to his 10th year as managing director of the company, has always worked to exactly the same principles.

“We have always tried to produce software that is compatible to prior releases. It was only fair to our previous customers to constantly be aware of the necessity for them to have security of investment. But that also meant that we always had to exercise foresight.

“Even today, all updates and versions are compatible with the previous versions. You have to go right back to 1996 to find a Silverball which is not compatible with today’s products. Considering that we live in what everyone calls the computer era, we think it’s not bad that we have managed to retain this compatibility.”

It could not have been easy to transfer to new technologies but keep that compatibility going; through milestones such as the interconnecting terminals which came with Version 5 and integrating a jukebox in 1998, plus the tournaments which came in 2003.

“In the past it was sometimes a challenge to produce the terminals which the industry wanted in the timescales the industry wanted and at the same time retain quality and compatibility. But it has its compensations. While our competitors sometimes have problems with piracy we have nearly always been able to avoid this issue, mainly by designing in ‘uncopyable’ features.”

TAB also had to break down some social and cultural barriers. Making games connectable through the internet across the globe was bound to have some reluctance by players to meet in such a way.

TAB tackled that one systematically and cautiously, achieving it step by step, beginning with free services and moving on gradually to electronic cash systems to give the operator the return.

Today’s Silverball is a very different piece of equipment from that launched 10 years ago. The differences are in all areas - graphics, software and hardware - and today’s Silverball has stereo audio, 3D graphics and a host of other technological attributes. “In those days we needed one designer,” said Dattl. “Today there are five.”

All of this technological and commercial achievement has seen about 100,000 Silverballs produced.

New markets and innovation

The main market remains Europe, but Silverball is in all parts of the world and in some of those regions it has constantly remained the top earner among touchscreens - the United Arab Emirates is a prime example. 

And North America? “We tested that market,” said Dattl, “but concluded that in order to service it properly we would have to manufacture there. The demographics were too demanding, but I have no doubt that we will ‘invade’ America once the market is ready for a product of Silverball’s quality and once the technological superiority of Silverball is recognised there.”

In 1999 there were about 40 producers of amusement terminals. Now there are three significant ones.

The impact of development and the failure to stay alive by innovation has taken the vast majority of them out of the market. 

This need for innovation is driving TAB-Austria to introduce more of its Premium Games and one exclusive new game every month while the company works on V14 - Version 14 of the Silverball, which will be marketed in 2009.

Before then, Version 13 will be supplemented in January by a range of new games which have never been on a touchscreen terminal before.

“The touchscreen game has become an independent line of products. Tens of thousands of Silverballs have been sold over the past decade to a variety of markets. It has endured a full range of the traditional coin machine industry ups and downs in that time, depending upon the country, but it has continued to consistently repay the investor.”

Silverball’s milestones are inevitable. By 1998 it offered 36 games and 10 languages and those figures went up each year with each new version of the machine.

Today there are 184 games in V12, 26 languages, 180,000 MP3s, Champions Net has been set up, it houses internet and email, OTM, a Golden Tournament, has joystick and camera facilities, 31 premium games and 12 head-to-head games.

It is not surprising that the company slogan is “better games by innovation.”