Among the ore than 160 software companies competing for a share of the online gambling market, Playtech shares the distinction with Microgaming of being pretty much the joint leaders in the multi-million dollar gaming software industry. Although entering the market around two years after its major competitor, Playtech's flair for innovation and inherent understanding of the player's needs soon gained them parity. Their slots games include Vegas-style classics, multi-line, multi-spin, bonus round and progressive jackpot slots. Although its games portfolio is smaller than that of its main rival the quality of their offering is certainly on a par.
Players love massive progressive jackpots and Playtech offers some of the biggest on the Internet. Their online casinos offer free game play when downloading the casino gaming software and most now provide Flash versions of many of their downloadable games following recent additions to their long line of new product development by Playtech.
Recently, Playtech has released an exclusive new progressive game called Dollar Ball. It is a side game embedded within the video slot machine games that offers players the option to bet an additional dollar as a Progressive side bet before spinning the reels. The game runs as a Progressive Lottery type game together with the main video slot game, in effect, allowing players to play two different games at once.
3-Reel slot machines remain popular at both online casino and land based casinos and Playtech offers about ten of them in its casino games collection. Of these, three incorporate a special bonus round feature while one also offers a progressive jackpot.
They have concentrated more heavily on the development of the increasingly popular 5-reel, multi-line video slots and have included a further 21 in their portfolio. With these games Playtech has taken the step of including in almost every one, not just one or more bonus round features but a progressive jackpot feature as well.
Another interesting aspect f the Playtech video slots games lies in the exceptional number of paylines that may be activated during play. While most rival developers have restricted their offerings to a maximum of 25 paylines, a number of the Playtech 5-reel, video slots offer players the option of enabling 30 and even 50 paylines. Most of these games also include the "Dollar Ball" feature described earlier.
9-reel Slot machines are a comparative rarity on the web but Playtech does in fact include 4 of them in its offering; which amounts to about half of the total found online. These games do not, in fact, have nine spinning reels but three that spin independently of one another giving rise to a 3 x 3 combination in which wins are possible on any one of the three horizontal lines, the three vertical lines and the two diagonal lines. Players may elect to bet on any number or all lines in play.