Quoted from Thermionic:

I have been pulling as hard as anyone for Spooky, but the time has come for them to "step it up" a notch or two in terms of engineering, coding, designs, and manufacturing. I think there were a lot of people who acknowledged that perhaps the games were slightly lacking in some areas when compared with the established manufacturers, but they bought anyway because of the desire to support the "underdog" new company and get some themes/licenses that Stern, et al. would likely decline. (If you recall, at the time AMH was launched there was a lot less variety of interesting themes on the market than we have today.)
So, it was basically OK that Spooky was just a sophisticated hobby operation when they launched the first couple of games, as people could look past the deficiencies because they had also bought into Spooky as a "concept". Now that they have made a few games, I think expectations are higher regarding the machines themselves, and it's definitely time for them to explore bringing some experienced (and formally trained) staff on board in order to refine and debug the designs and get things to a level that's consistent with Stern, CGC, AP, etc.