imo there are so many other features to improve than rewriting the engine core again just to release A9, not only killer new editors and asset importers, they are a must to stay alive, similarly to android support, but things like:
- an official forwards and a deferred renderer and shader package that really works, nice and fast, customizable like shade-c,
- or at least rework the current ones to be 99% bug free ,
- or update the physx version,
- or a navmesh pathfinder,
- or official tutorials (written and videos) going into details, covering not only the very basics as currently,
- or official open source (or buyable for a few dollars) commercial grade sample games in several genres (the best way of debugging an engine is to make a game by it),
- or a free but good quality graphics asset pack for newbies because it is much better feeling to start with something nice than with old crap (it would probably result in more nice work-in-progress project screenshots, what I usually check when want to test a game engine),
- or allowing terrain lod for commercial edition,
- or allowing bone animation shader for commercial edition,
- or move all pro features to commercial edition and kill pro edition,
- or real support for large open levels by terrain streaming (and of the entities placed on them, and their textures),
etc.
probably I missed a lot of other very important things, they are just my first thoughts.