In the online casino world, the most popular type of game by volume is the slot genre. There’s not really any disputing that because virtually every casino site out there has more slots than all other types of games combined, and it’s not usually even close. With that having been said, each software provider has things that make them stand out in terms of advantages and disadvantages. If you know how to pick out what you want and what will appeal to you within those pros and cons, then you’ll have a much better chance of finding titles that will appeal to you. In the list below you will find some of the best casino software providers.
Quality vs. Quantity
The main issue we see today is the difference between quality and quantity. If you look at a company like Microgaming, they’ve been around for over 20 years. Because they’ve been regularly producing games the entire time, they have somewhere in the range of 500 different slot titles attributed to them depending on where you’re playing and what platform you’re using.
With that having been said, many of those games are not of very high quality because the majority of them were made several years ago. If you look at their most recent games, they are definitely of high quality, but you can’t just them based totally on the number of games they have.
If you switch over and look at a company like Net Entertainment, they really can’t compete with companies like Microgaming in terms of the pure number of games they’ve produced. However, NetEnt does have a significant advantage in terms of quality, and they’ve developed many of the most high-quality games available today. This means you have to decide which is more important to you: high-quality games or a large number of games. Most people prefer the former.
Casino Software Platform Selection
There are three major casino software platforms: downloadable, mobile and instant-play. The downloadable option downloads an installer straight to your computer, and this is almost entirely reserved for Windows-based computers. With the instant-play option, you can play using Adobe Flash in your web browser.
This option can be used on any computer with an updated Internet browser as long as you have a connection, so that includes Macs and computers running Linux. The mobile option is a bit more tricky. There are several different ways a mobile platform can be deployed.
For one, you can have native apps that run like any other app on your iOS, Android, Windows or Blackberry phone. These aren’t very flexible because they can only run on a narrow range of devices. On the other hand, you can have web apps based on Flash or HTML5 that operated in your mobile web browser.
These games generally require a little bit of a loading time, and the interface and graphics aren’t usually at the exact same level as native apps. Still, they can be played on virtually any modern smartphone or tablet.
Casino Software Themes and Features
Once you get down to actually choosing the games, you really have to look at the types of themes and features that each slots software company has available. A company like BetSoft will tend to use themes based on a character that is from common motifs and stories like Pinocchio or characters that they’ve built themselves.
Companies like Microgaming and Playtech, however, also tend to include a lot of big-name brands like comic book characters, superheroes, television shows and moves into their slots. Other companies do this as well, but not as much as the companies with the most titles.
The features and formats of the games are pretty important as well. With Net Entertainment, for instance, they very rarely break away from the typical 5×3 and 5×4 layouts for their online slots. However, companies like iSoftBet and Novomatic have no trouble using atypical formats to give players something different to try.
It’s a refreshing approach, but it really just comes down to what a player is comfortable with and how far out of that comfort zone they’re willing to go for a solid experience. Overall, if you use these factors to plan ahead for the types of games you’d prefer to play and the platforms you want to play them on, then you’ll have no trouble picking the casino software companies with titles that best suit what you’re looking for.