Find a handsome selection of free WMS slot games, a selection expected to grow by leaps and bounds as the company continues to expand into the free online slots sphere. Most of the company’s early online slots releases are mostly 5 reels slots, elegantly simple, digitally remastered versions of the company’s early brick and mortar casino floor slots, with Stinkin’ Rich being perhaps the most famous one. The company has released many famous slots, taking advantage of popular TV and movie themes. Read More

A look at some new WMS slot machines American Casino Guide author, Steve Bourie, takes a look at some of the new WMS slot machines displayed at the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas. Included are Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers, the Godfather and Monopoly - Bigger Event.

Originally known for its pinball machines and popular arcade games, WMS gaming, a subsidiary of WMS Industries, traces its roots back to the Williams Manufacturing Company, founded in 1943 in Enterprise, Nevada. As the Second World War came to a close and millions of Americans of all ages began to seek entertainment opportunities in bars, where pinball machines could be found, and video game arcades, for those not old enough to drink, WMS became a familiar name across the country.

As a relative newcomer to the slots gaming market, WMS Gaming launched its first reel-spinning video slot machines operations in 1994, just as the arcade game trend began to wane and as the company was looking to use its vast in-house knowledge base to tape emerging new markets. By 1996 it had launched its first hit slot, a multi-coin, multi bonus feature slot called Reel ‘em In. At the same time, WMS founded a subsidiary, Midway Games, to hold and manage its extensive video game library, so it could focus primarily on the rapidly growing slots games market, as additional states began to legalize casino gambling and Indian tribes opened casino after casino fueling the boom.

Following on the success of Reel ‘em In, WMS quickly launched a number of successful slots games, including Jackpot Party, Boom and Filthy Rich. The gaming division was eventually incorporated as WMS Gaming in 1999 and has since that time concentrated only on the sale, leasing, licensing, manufacture and management of game machines, with a primary focus of video slots.

Slots tech innovators

In the early days, WMS’ popular video slots operated on the CPU-NXT platform, which the company unveiled in 2003. The idea was to use a faster, open architecture that tapped into the capacities Intel and other PC vendors were building into their hardware. As a result, their video slots ran on Linux, using a Pentium III processor and, in a stroke of genius, incorporated flash memory for the first time in video slots games.

Popular culture slots themes

Having become a solid competitor in the burgeoning global slots market and with its slots games appearing on casino floors across the US, WMS quickly tapped into popular culture themes launching a series of WMS slots games based on the Monopoly theme, a popular board game and a household name.

These “participation” slots as they were called, created a new business model, in which WMS would license or lease the game to casinos, instead of selling the games outright as had been the standard practice for decades. The “participation” idea allowed the company to seek out other strong popular culture brands with which to partner to convert these iconic names, such as Men in Black, Hollywood Squares, The Wizard of Oz, Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings and Ooh Ahh Dracula, into slots games on the casino floor.

The result was amazing, as WMS had found a new way to tap into younger players by creating themed slots games instantly relatable to a new, younger generation of casino goers. To further attract a whole new generation, WMS slot machines on the casino floor soon employed surround sound, playing familiar theme songs to the popular cultural icons the slot machines utilized, as well as flat panel displays and state-of-the-art animation to keep players engaged. At the end of the day, WMS had created a new industry trend, leading to the ever-expanding selection of popular culture slots games with ultra-modern sound and graphics seen on casino floors from Las Vegas, to Atlantic City and Macau today.

WMS slot machines heads online

By 2010, the company finally made its first forays into the online market, offering WMS slots online in the UK to players over the age of 18. A year later the company launched WMS slot games online in the US and started to tap the social gaming market, launching a Facebook based cruise ship themed slot in which players could win “lucky charms” instead of money. A year after that the company launched its free WMS slots on mobile and turned to focus its efforts on the skyrocketing growth being seen in the online games market.

Some of the most popular free WMS slots available today on Slotu include the likes of:

Jackpot Jewels, a seven reel, 50 payline slot with a smooth, easy feel. Designed to imitate its early brick and mortar casino floor successes, this slot spins a wealth of colored jewels in blue, green, purple and white, with wilds and scatters in a unique spin on traditional slots. With free spins unlocked with the right combination of precious gemstones, a prize multiplier and Hi Roller option, this slots game has long been a favorite of slots fanatics who love to indulge in old-school slots with a polished modern multireel twist.

Crown Gems, is another slot combining a traditional, stylized feel with easy to access and understand modern features. This free WMS slot also employs a gemstone theme, using diamonds, rubies, emeralds, face cards and a crown symbol as the most valuable find. While the slot does not have either wilds or scatters, this 5-reel slot with 50 paylines has a Hi Roller feature that allows players to unlock 20, 30, 40 or 50 more paylines to exponentially multiply your winnings.
Star Trek – Red Alert is one of the early examples of WMS “participation” slots available free online. Tapping into the popular Star Trek theme, together with excellent, digitally mastered sound, this 5-reel 20 payline free WMS slot online brings the famous TV series and Star Trek movies to your home PC or mobile device with familiar symbols such as a phaser, a communicator, a Klingon ship, a tricorder, Star Trek rank insignias and of course, Scotty, Spock and Captain Kirk. With multiple bonus game features, such as Win Warp, Star Trek Medals and Red Alert Bonus, this free online slot offers up Star Trek fans the chance to boldly win where only a few have won before.

Egyptian Riches is another of the 5-reel 20 payline free WMS slots offerings bring a sheik, elegant Egypt-themed design to free online slots players the world over. One of the most popular WMS slots, game symbols include an Ankh, a vase, a scarab, Cartouche, a cat, a falcon, the Eye of Ra and Anubis. The game logo works as the wild and the Queen is a bonus symbol, unlocking free spins and ever greater chances to win.

Raging Rhino has a fun, innocent feel and takes players into the jungles of Africa with symbols that include a rhino, cheetah, mongoose, crocodile and baboon. Free spins are unlocked by the diamond feature, which acts as a scatter and the wild symbol is the sun setting behind a tree deep in the heart of Africa. With 6-reels and 4096 ways to win, including features that will unlock 8, 15, 20 or 50 free spins as well as 2x and 3x prize multipliers, you can play this WMS slot machine and start winning big in the wilds of Africa in no time.

Conclusion

All in all, as the WMS free online slots offer continues to expand, here at Slotu you can play WMS slots online for free to your heart's content and are sure to have a blast thanks to the company’s beautifully woven brand of traditional brick and mortar casino slots feel and refined graphics. WMS free online slots are designed to soothe players looking for fun and excitement in a slots machine that’s easy to understand and relate to, without being completely overwhelmed by the ostentatious bells and whistles that so many other free online slots makers present today.

WMS Gaming is a manufacturer of slot machines, video lottery terminals and software to help casinos manage their gaming operations. It also offers online and mobile games. The company is based in Chicago, Illinois. WMS is a subsidiary of WMS Industries, which became a wholly owned subsidiary of Scientific Games Corporation in 2013.

WMS entered the reel-spinning slot machine market in 1994, and in 1996, it introduced its first hit casino slot machine, Reel 'em In, a 'multi-line, multi-coin secondary bonus' video slot machine. It followed this with a number of similar games like Jackpot Party, Boom and Filthy Rich. By 2001, it introduced its Monopoly-themed series of 'participation' slots. Since then, WMS Gaming has continued to obtain licenses to manufacture gaming machines using several additional famous brands. The company continues to sell gaming machines and to market its participation games.

History[edit]

Williams Slot Machine Manual

WMS Gaming is a subsidiary of WMS Industries, whose roots date back to the 1943 founding of Williams Manufacturing Company. Over the last decades of the 20th century, Williams produced popular pinball machines and video arcade games. By 1996, WMS had transferred its video game library to its video game subsidiary, Midway Games, which it took public and finally spun off in the late 1990s.^[1] With the rapid decline of the arcade industry in the 1990s, the company's pinball business became unprofitable, and WMS sold off the pinball line in 2000.^[2]

Meanwhile, in 1991, WMS created a new division, Williams Gaming, to enter the gaming and state video lottery markets, developing and releasing its first video lottery terminals for the Oregon market in 1992. Williams Gaming entered the reel-spinning slot machine market in 1994, but the company's video gaming roots ultimately would prove to be its strength when, in 1996, it introduced its first hit casino slot machine, Reel 'em In, a 'multi-line, multi-coin secondary bonus' video slot machine. WMS followed this with a number of similar successful games like Jackpot Party, Boom and Filthy Rich. During the 1990s, the gaming industry grew as additional states permitted casino gambling and video lottery games, and as Native American tribes built gaming casinos. The division was incorporated as WMS Gaming in 1999 and has since focused exclusively on the manufacture, sale, leasing, licensing and management of gaming machines.^[3][4]

In 2001, a glitch was uncovered in the company's software that allowed players to earn credits on some machines without paying for them.^[5] The industry leader IGT also sued WMS for patent infringement related to its reel-spinning games, winning a judgment that required WMS to limit the flexibility of its line of reel-spinning games. WMS Gaming's new video operating platform, CPU-NXT, debuted in 2003. It employed a faster, more open architecture that took advantage of the economies of scale enjoyed by Intel and other PC component vendors. The slot machine platform is based on the Linux operating system, initially ran on an Intel Pentium III processor and was the first to use flash memory rather than erasable programmable read only memory.^[3][6][7]

By 2001, WMS introduced its very successful Monopoly-themed series of 'participation' slots, which the company licenses or leases to casinos, instead of selling the games to the casinos. The company's subsequent participation games have included machines based on well-known entertainment-related brands as Men in Black, Hollywood Squares, The Wizard of Oz, Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings and Clue. Some of these games are networked within casinos and even between multiple casinos so that players have a chance to win large jackpots based on the number of machines in the network. These branded games proved popular with players and profitable for WMS, as the net licensing revenues and lease fees generated by each game have exceeded the profit margins of its games for sale.^[8][9][10] The company's revenues grew to a high of $783.3million in 2011, but they decreased to $689.7million in 2012.^[11]

WMS Gaming's parent, WMS Industries, merged with Scientific Games in October 2013, becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Scientific Games. Scientific Games paid $1.5 billion for WMS, and WMS shareholders received $26.00 per share. At the time of the merger, the company's stock ceased trading on the New York Stock Exchange.^[11][12]

Products, technology, business[edit]

WMS Gaming's products have helped to move the industry trend away from generic mechanical slot machines and toward games that incorporate familiar intellectual properties and more creative ways to pay off. For more than a century beginning in the late 1800s, mechanical slot machine reels employed limited themes: card suits, horseshoes, bells and stars, varieties of fruit, black bars and the Liberty Bell.^[6] WMS's 1996 video slot machine Reel 'em In, introduced multi-line and multi-coin secondary bonus pay-outs. Later, the company's licensed themes, beginning with Monopoly, helped to greatly expand its sales and profits.^[13]

Some of WMS Gaming's product designs reflect the changing demographics of its industry. Younger players raised on video games often seek more challenging experiences, both physical and mental, than do women age 55 to 65 – the traditional audience for slot machines. Accordingly, some of the company's machines incorporate surround sound, flat-panel display screens and animated, full-color images.^[14]

Williams Slot Games

The company also manufactures the G+ series of video reel slots, the Community Gaming family of interconnected slots, as well as mechanical reels, poker games, and video lottery terminals.^[10] WMS began to offer online gaming in 2010 to persons over 18 years old in the UK^[15] and in 2011 in the US at www.jackpotparty.com.^[10] In 2012, WMS partnered with Large Animal Games to incorporate several of WMS's slot machine games into a cruise ship-themed Facebook game application titled 'Lucky Cruise'. By playing games and enlisting Facebook friends' help, players can accumulate 'lucky charms' (instead of money). The game play is similar to playing a slot machine but includes a 'light strategy component'.^[16][17]

New Williams Slot Machines Machine

In 2012, after experiencing a decline in revenues from the contracting casino market, the company introduced gaming on mobile devices and focused its efforts on expanding its online game offerings. For casinos, it introduced My Poker video poker games.^[11]

WMS Gaming technologies include:

• Transmissive Reels gaming platform, which employs video animation that is displayed around, over and seemingly interactively with mechanical reels. The technology is based on the CPU-NXT2 operating platform.^[18]
• Operating platforms. CPU-NXT2 operating platform, which incorporates an Intel Pentium IV class processor, up to 2 gigabytes of random access memory, an ATI 3-D graphics chip-set, and a 40 gigabyte hard disk drive, is used in most of the games.^[10] The CPU-NXT3 operating platform was introduced in 2012 for participation games and new cabinets.^[11]
• Cabinets: The Bluebird2 gaming cabinet, which includes a dual 22-inch wide screen, high-definition displays, Bose speakers, and an illuminated printer and bill acceptor, was introduced in 2008.^[19] The Blade and Gamefield xD cabinets were introduced in 2013.^[11]

Approximately 70% of WMS's revenues are derived from U.S. customers.^[9] Its corporate office and manufacturing facilities are in Las Vegas, Nevada. It has other development, sales and field services offices across the United States and international development and distribution facilities located in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, China, India, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain and the United Kingdom^[10] and an online gaming center in Belgium.^[11]

References[edit]

1. ^Midway Games Form S-3 filed with the SEC and dated on November 27, 2001
2. ^Form 10-K Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2001, WMS Industries Inc., accessed May 9, 2012
3. ^ ^abHughlett, Mike (November 19, 2006). 'WMS places bets on new slot technology: Server-based gaming, arcadelike machines may spur sales jackpot'. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2009-05-27.
4. ^'WMS Corporate Profile'. Retrieved 2009-05-27.
5. ^Yamanouchi, Kelly. 'Slot glitch offers cheater payoff', Chicago Tribune, May 1, 2001, accessed September 8, 2013
6. ^ ^abEisenberg, Bart (January 2004). 'The New 'One-Arm Bandits' Today's slot machines are built like PCs, programmed like video games'. Software Design. Gijutsu-Hyohron Co., Ltd. Retrieved 2009-05-28.
7. ^'WMS Industries Inc. 10K filing'. United States Security and Exchange Commission. September 11, 2006. Retrieved 2009-05-27.
8. ^WMS Annual Report for Fiscal 2008 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 28, 2008
9. ^ ^abWMS Annual Report for Fiscal 2010 (ending June 30, 2010) filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 26, 2010
10. ^ ^abcdeAnnual Report for Fiscal 2011, WMS Annual Reports, WMS Investor Relations pages, September 29, 2011
11. ^ ^abcdef'WMS Annual Report for Fiscal 2013', (ending June 30, 2013) filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 29, 2013
12. ^'News release: Scientific Games Completes Acquisition of WMS'Archived 2014-01-17 at Archive.today, Scientific Games Corporation, October 18, 2013
13. ^'WMS Reports Quarterly Record $0.41 Diluted Earnings Per Share for Fiscal 2009 Second Quarter'. Business Wire. April 21, 2009. Retrieved 2009-05-28.
14. ^Rivlin, Gary (December 10, 2007). 'Slot Machines for the Young and Active'. New York Times. Retrieved 2009-05-28.
15. ^WMS Quarterly Report for the period ended December 31, 2010, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 9, 2011
16. ^'Lucky Cruise Launched on Facebook as First Social Game Collaboration Between Large Animal Games And WMS Gaming', WMS Gaming, Reuters, February 14, 2012
17. ^Green, Marian. 'A matter of persistence…', Casino Journal.com, June 1, 2012
18. ^'WMS Launches Premium, For-Sale, Multi-Game Gaming Machine on Popular Transmissive Reels Platform'. WMS press release. October 7, 2008. Retrieved 2009-05-28.
19. ^'WMS Wins Four Awards for Player-Focused Products in Casino Journal's Top 20 Most Innovative Gaming Technology Products Awards for 2008'. WMS press release. April 16, 2009. Retrieved 2009-05-28.

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