On this site I’ve previously talked about the belief that licensed games are set to payback lower than non-licensed games to cover the fees. Generally speaking, that’s handled nowadays instead by just setting bets to be higher.
A connected belief is that larger slot machines are designed to pay out less, because they take up more floor space on the casino floor.
STATUS: Not true.
Casino slot machines take up many form factors, from the tiny to the enormous. In recent years casinos have adopted some larger machines and generally more airy casino floors. This contributes to a trend in recent years – less long lines of rows of machines packed together, but more spaced out and in interesting clusters.
Larger cabinets just become one choice in terms of ensuring an interesting and eye-catching diversity of games on the floor. There’s usually less of them, but the games on them tend to draw people.
Many times premium games, including licensed games, may find their way onto a larger cabinet, and as such the bets will be set up to be higher to account for that. The larger cabinets, combined with the premium theme, is aiming for maximum attention.
In other cases, some games end up on multiple cabinets – Lightning Link, Buffalo Gold and Buffalo Stampede have both appeared on smaller cabinets, and also on Aristocrat’s largest cabinet they’ve got. The game itself isn’t any different, but the games listed above are all parts of popular lines for the company, so it’ll draw players in nonetheless, and have bet levels that can justify that hardware.
As such, this works out to be quite similar to the question around licensed cabinets. You likely won’t encounter a lower payout, but it is pretty likely you’ll encounter a higher bet requirement.