The online gaming industry continues to grow apace, with more developers, games and online casinos coming into the market, providing even more choice and variety for players in New Zealand. Our job here at online-casino-nz is to make the business of checking out the quality of new sites easier by doing it for you. We know what to look for when we review a new casino in terms of its viability, reliability and ability to offer a high quality gaming experience, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of playing at a newly-established site.
Read on to learn more about the good and the bad when it comes to playing at a new online casino, as well as our recommendations for new sites to check out.
Whenever we review a gaming site, regardless of whether it’s new or has been in business for years, there are qualities it needs to have before we will recommend it. The Welcome Bonus, for instance, has to offer new players real value, whether it be through deposit matches, free spins, or a good wagering requirement. The games have to be high quality and, just as importantly, there needs to be variety. In addition, financial transactions need to secure, and they have to have clear policies in place as to what they do with your personal information.
Most importantly, the customer support has to be easily accessible from New Zealand, and the payment methods offered have to be convenient for Kiwis to use – not to mention the fact that you need to be able to operate your account in NZD$.
When you play at a new site trying to build a reputation, there are a couple of ways this can benefit you. Firstly, as a rule, the Welcome Bonuses for new players tend to be more generous as a way of generating positive coverage, plus there’s likely to be more variety in the gaming options too.
One of the ways in which a new casino site can announce itself on the scene is through its Welcome Bonus. Recently launched sites have broadened the range of signup offers out there, and this fresh thinking has undoubtedly benefitted players. This is because they tend to be made up of a combination of different elements – for instance, a Welcome Bonus comprising of a no deposit free spins bonus, a deposit match (or matches), plus some additional free spins on top.
Also, different types of Welcome Bonus are designed to suit different types of players, enabling more people to be able to claim the full bonus amount. For instance, at some new sites, you get a straightforward 100% match on a relatively modest sum, in the region of $100 or $200, making it within the reach of the casual or occasional player. On the other hand, casinos offering multi-tier deposit matches, where you get a bonus on your first three or four deposits, means that those who want to spend big can get much bigger bonuses, sometimes worth up to a couple of thousand dollars.
Other innovations that we have seen recently include free spins bonuses with no wagering requirements applied to bonus winnings. Options like these have been created by new casino sites coming into the industry.
New casinos have also been swift to adopt the latest developments in gaming technology, especially in the realm of Flash and HTML5. You’ll find that enhanced technology means that most new sites aren’t confining themselves to offering the games of just one producer – the pattern is that they feature the games of one big developer alongside those by several newer names in the industry as well. This means that when you play at a new casino, you tend to get far more variety, and can access exciting and innovative new games alongside your old favourites.
New casinos also tend to be Instant Play-only sites, which means more accessibility as you can play anywhere on any device – even if it’s not your own – as long as you have your username and password. Sites that operate in this way also generally have a greater selection of mobile pokies and other games that you can play on a smartphone or tablet, and this is another real positive of playing at new casinos.
One final advantage is that when it comes to tournaments, competitions and promotions, at a new site you’re unlikely to be up against as much competition (at least in the early days), so the opportunity is there to pick up some great prizes more easily.
It’s probably fair to say that when you play at a new site that hasn’t yet had time to build its reputation that you’re going to have uncertainty as to whether they’re going to be able to deliver. However, we’re pretty experienced at knowing what to look out for in new sites, and in our reviews and other pages we look at how you can tell whether a casino site is one you can trust, in terms of its accreditation, security measures and the software it uses.
Other potential downsides in opting to play at somewhere new include the fact that often they don’t yet have a full calendar of promotions in place, so you might not be able to pick up as many additional benefits as you might elsewhere (at least in the short term). It might also be that you have fewer payment methods at your disposal at a site that’s only just opened, although they’ll usually offer the most widely-accepted methods, so for most players in New Zealand this shouldn’t be an issue.
Here at online-casino-nz, we think variety is the key to a first-rate gaming experience, and so we’re always excited about the opportunity to check out and play at a new site. We also love the fact that so many of these have bigger ranges of games, and more variety in their selections, and we think this is a real positive when it comes to choosing a new site too.
You can find out which are the best new New Zealand casinos for yourself by checking out our table of recommendations.
