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Demo Day 1, Part 3: Games

On to the games. It's hard to imagine they pay me for this.

Vyro Games: It's a stess relief game. There's a handheld device called a PIP that measures your stess level. It's a bluetooth device that pairs with your phone; you can view your stress on your phone through the game. One game races dragons, another lets you calm a storm through your own lack of stress. They're seeking to serve non-traditional gamers. Another game: Lie Detective. You can figure out what that one does.

NCursion: A multiplayer game for Facebook. My Gladiator is the first game. Uses connectivity to facebook to bring in players, but the play is on the mygladiator site. If you're good at it, you win Gladiator Gold. What's very clear to me is that I'm not a gamer. I really can't imagine spending time on this, but I'm sure there people who'd like to play. It costs $20 to play -- let's see how that plays on my expense report.

WMS: Casino gaming company that wants to bring flashy graphics to slot machines with mechanical reels. The technology is called "transmissive reels". Players trust the mechanical reels; this puts a clear display in front of the mechanical reels so that cool graphics can be shown in front of the reels. The company says that slots make more than 60% of casino revenue, so innovating around it is a big bucks business.

So that's the morning of Demo, Day 1. Some interesting stuff, most of it aimed straight at the consumer. What appeared different today than at Demo Spring was that most of these companies had something of a business model, even if it was just to build a technology that would have be bought by a larger Web presence to be successful. The one that's going to make the most money? You can bet it's the high-tech slot machines.

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