Multiplayer online development services provider Exit Games has announced Photon, a multiplayer development engine for PC, browser, Mac and mobile devices including iPhone and Android.

Exit says Photon is geared for the development of games that let players compete against one another in real time, and the first Photon-developed game is Cmune's Paradise Paintball, a browser-based 3D multiplayer shooter also available on Facebook.

Photon comes with multiple platform SDKs including Flash, Windows, .NET, Unity3D, Android and iPhone, among others, notably recently adding support for Unity 3D. It features a purely C-based core engine and Exit Games' Neutron 5.0 managed service for connectivity features.

"Photon is absolutely unique in the market, and delivers an affordable, easy-to-use experience to developers," says Exit Games CTO Chris Wegmann. "Most of the commercial network middleware services are either difficult to use, or are based on technology which is not the natural choice for many game developers."

"What makes Photon so unique is its second-to-none platform support, the purely C-based core engine which, quite simply, delivers the best performance while also being easily expandable using C#/.NET."

[The preceding article by Leigh Alexander also appeared on Worlds in Motion sister site Gamasutra.]