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GSA Releases New Version of SAS Gaming Machine Protocol2 July 2003LAS VEGAS – (Press Release) -- The Gaming Standards Association (GSA), an international trade organization dedicated to ensuring open standards and communication in the gaming industry, announces the immediate release of the GSA SAS(TM) 6.01 specification. This is the latest version of its gaming communications protocol that allows for communication between gaming machines and slot accounting and monitoring systems. The release offers enhancements to address new industry and regulatory requirements relating to the recently adopted Nevada regulations. IGT (NYSE: IGT) provided the SAS protocol to GSA in 2001 in support of the industry's goal of providing open standards for the facilitation of interoperability between gaming machines and gaming systems. "This demonstrates IGT's ongoing commitment to support the SAS protocol for the benefit of the industry," said Ali Saffari, Senior Vice President, IGT Firmware Engineering. "We look forward to working with GSA to continually support and enhance SAS. We are proud to be releasing, with GSA, this new protocol to over 100 companies worldwide. Additionally, we will be releasing our interim SAS system simulator that will benefit these companies while GSA completes their SAS toolkit." "The GSA SAS workgroup continues to serve as the vehicle for the industry to provide input for enhancements and clarifications that will improve the development and implementation of the GSA SAS protocol specification," said GSA President Peter DeRaedt. "We have an agreement in place with IGT to direct the change management of the SAS protocol by the GSA SAS committee and IGT will provide GSA with continued support to ensure the further enhancement of the protocol. To support the broad needs of the industry, GSA is actively investigating the adoption of additional specifications, which support our objectives. After the implementation of our revised patent policy, the development of GSA's new, open standard, which we call the "Best of Breed" or BOB standard, will be accelerated with an expected completion of late 2003." The original protocol was developed by slot manufacturer IGT and released as an official GSA specification in July 2002. The protocol allows for and provides a secure method of communication between gaming machines and slot accounting systems and provides a secure method of communicating all necessary data supplied by the gaming machine to the online monitoring system. Its AFT functionality allows for gaming machines and funds transfer systems to work together to manage transfer transactions on the casino floor, using a single communications protocol. |