Microgaming vs NetEnt: a grade and an index do not translate

Size and format mix

This site carries 230 NetEnt slots and 295 Microgaming slots (plus 58 live tables). NetEnt's table games are not included in the slot list.

NetEnt has 142 fixed-payline, 51 ways, 19 cluster-pays and 18 standard slots. Its catalogue records reels, rows and lines almost everywhere, so few entries fall to standard. Microgaming has 147 standard, 71 fixed-payline, 54 ways and 16 cluster slots, plus a few Link & Merge, Maxways and cascading titles.

So the gap in standard-family share (18 for NetEnt, 147 for Microgaming) is mostly a gap in how entries are written: NetEnt's format fields are long, Microgaming's hub fields are short.

Volatility: word grade versus index

NetEnt publishes volatility as an index rather than a grade. 226 titles here have a value, from 2.5 on Imperial Riches to 37.02 on Jelly Belly Megaways, with a median of 6.8. Four are unlisted.

Microgaming uses word grades: 115 High, 74 Medium, 59 Very high, 20 Low, 7 Medium-high, 1 Low-medium and 19 unlisted. NetEnt publishes no rule for grouping its index into words, so this site carries the index as it is (“Index 6.8”) and does not convert it.

That means the two studios' volatility distributions cannot be set side by side at all. Saying whether index 6.8 is Microgaming's Medium or High would require inventing a boundary the studio never drew. Indices can be compared within NetEnt; the comparison with Microgaming stops here.

RTP and win caps

RTP is published for 226 NetEnt and 240 Microgaming slots, with nearly equal medians: 96.19% for NetEnt and 96.12% for Microgaming. NetEnt ranges from 95.08% (Excalibur) to 99% (Mega Joker), and for some games it also publishes a split of that figure between base game and bonus.

NetEnt publishes caps for 225 titles (97.8%), median 2,200×, with a top of 66,666× on Dead or Alive 3: Wanted. Microgaming has caps on only 37 (12.5%), median 10,000×.

NetEnt's lower median cap also reflects the age of its catalogue: many older games with caps in the hundreds or low thousands remain, such as Starburst (800×, 2012) and Blood Suckers (900×, 2009). Microgaming's figure comes from just the 37 slots with a listed cap, so the two medians were not produced under the same conditions.

Release years, demos and themes

All 230 NetEnt slots are dated, running from 2006 to 2026, and 112 of them, close to half, predate 2020; 57 are from 2024 to 2026. Of Microgaming's 235 dated slots, 60 predate 2020 and 92 are from 2024 to 2026.

Demos differ sharply. NetEnt has zero demos on this site: the studio opens free play only for some classic titles, behind an age check that issues a session, so there is no public launcher to embed. Microgaming runs demos for 265 of its 295. NetEnt's top themes are Wealth (29), Animals (17) and Fruit & classic (15); Microgaming's are Wealth (99), East Asia (52) and Sports (26).

Examples on the NetEnt side include Starburst (96.08%, index 3.1, 800×), Gonzo's Quest (95.97%, index 6.7, 2,200×) and Dead or Alive 2 (96.8%, index 9.9, 1,600×); on the Microgaming side, K-POP Hunter Zeus (95.91%, Very high, 50,000×) and Thunderstruck II (96.65%, High).

The difference is shape and publishing, not quality

The two catalogues share almost the same median RTP and differ in most other ways. NetEnt carries more older titles, writes formats in detail and publishes volatility as an index. Microgaming carries more recent titles, writes volatility as words and publishes caps for only some games.

None of this makes either one better. Different publishing simply leaves fewer boxes that can be compared, and this piece goes only as far as showing which boxes those are.