borntobesting:They no longer use Neutron 4.0 but rather Photon cloud. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
It's just the "next generation" of platform. WGT contracted with Exit Games(EG) in 2007, when mobile users were not even a drop in the bucket. As mobile usage slowly increased over the next 7-8 years, it stands to reason that EG was tacking on mobile-compatible functionality to their existing framework.
Fast-forward 2016, you've got at minimum a 9-year old code base that wasn't really designed to support mobile. At least, not on such a large scale. By now that original code base has been supplemented with all kinds of mobile-supporting hacks and quirky, ugly code that only exists to be functional, but not efficient.
Once you do that so much that it can be difficult to maintain the code, read the code, or remember all of the "quirks" to keep it running and compiling. Spaghettified code is a dev's worst nightmare. It's kinda like having an old car, and having to do "the trick" because that's the only way it would start. You gotta stroke the code base just the right way too, or it'll flip sh*t on you.
I imagine a few years before the mobile explosion in 2013/2014 someone at EG decided it was time to write some new software that was designed specifically to accommodate the new generation of mobile platforms (in addition to legacy platforms) rather than continue to throw new mobile hacks at an older framework that wasn't designed to support it.
Essentially Exit Games is saying, "hey, we've got everything here to support your multi-player game development on any platform, you don't even have to go looking for the integration tools yourself we have it all here AND we'll host for you in our cloud. You can make the check out to Fred in accounting."
This was likely a planned move by WGT to develop and then drop the app
at the same time Exit switched their framework to better support the litany of mobile
devices.
In terms of effects on us it should be a net positive. A better, cleaner, more efficient codebase utilizing all the latest and greatest libraries should result in better play (read: lesser disconnections) for just about everyone. Everything about multiplayer gaming has improved greatly since 2007. Mobile is still fresh and people are still figuring out how to do things better with a single all-inclusive solution.
In 2007, the world was introduced to the first iPhone. Look at it now. Imagine trying to hack the original code of that iPhone to bring it up to speed with 2016. This is why your older phones and tablets get bricked after an OS update. Maintaining backwards-compatibility when the technology is growing faster than you can develop for it is difficult to say the least.