About Pinnacle:

Founded in 1996, Pinnacle Entertainment Group recently celebrated ten years in business. After a successful corporate career managing a large family entertainment center chain, founder George McAuliffe began Pinnacle to serve as expert consultants to the rapidly evolving family and location based entertainment market. Shortly after its founding, Pinnacle had the opportunity to test game operations in six Wal-Mart stores. By applying professional operating and service standards, Pinnacle quickly was approved to operate in over 50 Wal-Mart Stores, while developing a diverse operating base. As the game industry evolved to be merchandise machine dominant, and as Pinnacle itself operated hundreds of cranes and merchandise machines, the company began in 2001 to offer its custom designed merchandise mixes to other amusement operators. Today the company continues to focus on these three areas: consulting, merchandise sales, and operations.

George McAuliffe

Prior to founding Pinnacle, George McAuliffe began his family and location based entertainment career with one of the original family amusement chains, ultimately running the Edison Brothers Entertainment (EBE) chain. Edison Brothers stores were located in 38 states, Puerto Rico, and Mexico and were staffed by approximately 1,000 employees, operating over 8,000 games in regional shopping malls, restaurants, hotels and transportation centers as well as several casinos in Las Vegas and Reno, NV.


Mr. McAuliffe is an active member of all of the major industry associations and has been a speaker at numerous industry conventions including IAAPA, Fun Expo, and AMOA as well as worldwide assemblies including ATEI (UK), Gulf Leisure Expo(Middle East), and the Asia Pacific Attractions Conferences (Australia and Singapore). He is a founding director, member, and past president of IALEI, the International Association of the Leisure and Entertainment Industries. For many years he wrote a regular column for RePlay magazine, and has written for many other industry journals.

Howard McAuliffe

Howard began his career in family entertainment in 1996 as Pinnacle’s first employee, responsible for backfilling the company’s growing crane and amusement game route in St. Louis and Southern Illinois. He continued to be involved with the company during college in Missouri and Spain, and joined the company full time after graduation. Howard has focused on developing Pinnacle’s merchandise sales business, leveraging his experience as a hands-on operator on behalf of our customers. He also helps support the company’s consulting clients.

Our Team

George and Howard are the key Pinnacle managers. On the merchandise sales side we are supported by a warehouse staff. For larger consulting projects the company has an extensive network of associated consultants and firms, which we pull together on a project basis. Our associates include entertainment managers, technology experts, architects and designers, marketing, group sales specialists, restaurant experts, investment bankers, and finance people. As a result Pinnacle is prepared to support projects ranging in scope, as our slogan goes, “from the corner tavern to Disneyland.”