New tools for developing games on Windows Phone

At the GDC conference in San Francisco, a number of announcements were made about new tools for developing games on the Microsoft platform. Now, in addition to existing tools such as DirectX, developers can use Unity 3D, Marmalade, Havok.

Windows Phone 8 is a great platform for game development, with support for native code, and which allows you to quickly port game applications, in some cases in just a few days, for example from iOS and Android platforms. Thanks to the convergence with the Windows 8 platform, developers also have the opportunity to reuse most of the code.
The Windows 8 monetization platform has a number of important features that are often used in gaming applications, including payments within the application (both for one-time purchase scenarios and for purchases of consumable resources), providing ample opportunities for monetizing applications. This is an addition to the existing models of advertising, paid and trial monetization. In addition to this, there are options to connect third-party payment systems, such as PayPal, Airplay and payments through operators. The latter option is preferred by more than 75% of Windows Phone users who have a choice between paying through an operator and a credit card, the volume of paid downloads through an operator is more than 3 times higher than downloads paid for with a credit card.
Windows Phone users love to play, more than a third of all downloads are games, and 60% of Windows Phone Store revenue is generated by games. More than half of the developers from the “Top50” list create gaming applications.

New tools and new games

Now creating and porting gaming applications for Windows Phone has become even easier thanks to the new tools:

• Unity Tecnologies has announced the launch of the open beta program for testing Unity3D for Windows Phone 8. The beta program open to all developers is an opportunity to try new tools, give feedback and start developing for the Windows Phone 8 platform. Based on this technology, gaming applications have already been created and published as Drift Mania Champoinship 2 (Ratrod Studio), Fling Theory (Coding Jar Studios) - exclusive on the platform of Windows Phone, Orcs Must Survive (Echoboom), and Temple Run .
• Marmalade just recently launched a new beta of its Windows Phone SDK which is available to all developers and the announcement of two games ported from iOS and Android platforms was made: this is 6th Planet (Monkube) and Propel Man (Spiel Studio).
• Havoc showed at the GDC conference on the Windows Phone 8 platform. Andrew Bovel, a Havoc employee, said: “In our company, we are all for creating stunning 3D worlds with a high level of realism, interactivity, and cinema-like effects. The Windows Phone 8 platform provides all the necessary elements to create such applications with Havoc and allows developers to create high-quality and exciting games. ”
• Another popular open source library, Cocos2d-x for Windows Phone 8, today received an update and is now compatible with the Cocos2d-x v2.1 API.

In addition to everything, I would like to talk about one more announcement of the GDC. PowerA introduced its MOGA controllers, which are specifically designed for mobile devices. The new MOGA SDK for Windows Phone will be available soon.

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If you want to get more information about the development tools for gaming applications for Windows 8, be sure to check out the video about creating games for WP8 using Unity.