YoYo Games to bring drag-and-drop game development support to Android

This may cause an upswing in mediocre games being brought to the Android Market, it may not. It could bring a lot of cool retro-ish type games instead but for right now there is no way to tell. One thing is for sure though, it will be interesting to see what comes out of YoYo Games' drag-and-drop game development program called Game Maker which will soon support Android.

For awhile now YoYo Games has supported mainly iOS but that is all changing as they plan to expand support for their Game Maker (now in version 8) to include Android along with PSP Mini and the iPad. Game Maker basically lets you create games using nothing more then drag-and-dropping items into the main screen.

You can use just that method to create your game or you can further extend Game Maker, allowing it to do a lot more including 3D games. There is definitely no shortage of resources over at YoYo Games including tutorials, files, libraries and forums all dedicated to making games with this drag-and-drop solution.

There are two versions of Game Maker, a Lite free version and a Pro version which will set you back $25. That isn't all though that YoYo Games will do. They also plan to sell your game (should you wish they do so) and while the profit cut is 50:50, not taking into account Google Checkout fees or anything else that may be used when the time comes to support Android such as PayPal, developers will keep all the IP rights to their games. Games are also sold through the YoYo Games Store.

If you want to make a free game, throw an ad in and let it be published to YoYo Games main site which is a free games portal that gets around 1.5 million visitors a month, not too shabby. However, if you make a bad game and expect it to be published (free or otherwise) then you might want to think again as they check every one of them which is a lot considering they get 150/day on average submitted.

For more information regarding Game Maker you can head over to the developer section of YoYo Games where all the resources including a Wiki and more are located. No exact date has been announced regarding Android support but it was mentioned that it would be "by the end of this year". If you have ever wanted to develop a game for Android, this might be something to check out.

Developer Website: YoYo Games

Website Referenced: PocketGamer