YoYo Games lands Microsoft as a supporter of its cross-platform game engine GameMaker

YoYo Games landed a big fish today. The maker of GameMaker: Studio said that it’s working with Microsoft to offer support for its cross-platform game-development environment for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.

That means developers will be able to use GameMaker: Studio to create their games and quickly publish them on Microsoft’s PC, smartphone, and tablet operating systems. GameMaker can take the same code and easily export the games to other platforms, including Android, iOS (Apple’s iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad), Facebook, HTML5, and the Mac, said Sandy Duncan, the chief executive of YoYo Games, in an interview with GamesBeat. The cooperation with Microsoft is a big sign of growing support for GameMaker, which has been around for a while. YoYo Games recently revamped it for cross-platform development.

“All it takes is one button click, and it will run natively on multiple platforms,” Duncan said.

GameMaker: Studio for Windows 8 will be ready for developers before the Oct. 26 launch of Windows 8, while Windows Phone 8 support will be ready later this year.

Dundee, Scotland-based YoYo Games wants to establish GameMaker: Studio as a lingua franca for making games that run fast on a variety of platforms, matching the speed of code written in native formats.

YoYo Games launched GameMaker: Studio as a $99 package for professional game developers in May. The tools are based on free versions of GameMaker, which was originally released in 1999 by game creator Mark Overmars and has been downloaded more than 10 million times. For the past six years, YoYo Games has been working on beefed-up versions of the development tools so developers can use them to make games that can easily run across many different platforms. GameMaker has a community of half a million registered users and comes in more than 5,000 schools.

“We are thrilled to be working closely with Microsoft to launch GameMaker: Studio for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8,” said Duncan. “The beauty with GameMaker: Studio is that it’s extremely easy for developers who have already or are currently developing with our environment to have Windows Style U.I. games ready for publishing on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 in a short amount of time.”

“We are excited that YoYo Games is bringing Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 publishing to the GameMaker: Studio development community,” said John Richards, the senior director of Windows Apps Marketing at Microsoft. “We are looking forward to expanding the Windows 8 development community and the breadth of apps available across Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.”