YoYo – Game Maker – Tizen – Beta

If the above headline doesn’t mean a great deal to you, you may not be alone.  It is good news however.  It means that Scotland’s YoYo Games is continuing to support future technologies and that the company’s popular GameMaker platform (which, the company tells us, has now been downloaded over 5,000,000 times) could be at the forefront of the next big seismic shift in gaming.

Tizen, if you have not yet come across it, is a new operating system aimed at smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, in-vehicle systems, cameras and other more limited devices (by which we mean ‘not a console’).  One of the project’s main goals is to create a more unified experience across all platforms.

Tizen is a linux-based operating system, which uses the WebKit runtime (both Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari browsers use/used it) and is supported by Intel and Samsung.  While the idea of yet another O/S may make you wince, consider that the consumer market is increasingly non-expert and a system which allows people the same experience on their TV, phone and other devices could well be decisive.

Game Maker: Studio for Tizen will be available for the platform’s launch in 2013, allowing users to export their existing, or newly created games, ready for the new Tizen store.

Sandy Duncan, the CEO of YoYo Games, told us:

“We strongly believe that Tizen will be a significant platform for mobile and other devices and we’re keen to show our early commitment to the platform.  The most exciting to us is the range of cross platform devices that will be embraced including in-car entertainment and Smart TV as well as smart phones and tablets. GameMaker: Studio technology is so utterly flexible that it allows us to adapt to new platforms and opportunities like Tizen very quickly and efficiently so that developers can take advantage of these emerging opportunities without the need to re-invest to publish their content.”

GameMaker: Studio’s Tizen beta will be available in conjunction with the Tizen Developers Conference May 22-24 in San Francisco, where YoYo Games will be demonstrating the new functionality for attendees.

GameMaker: Studio’s Tizen beta will be free to anyone who has purchased GameMaker: Studio PROFESSIONAL or GameMaker: Studio MASTER COLLECTION. Once out of beta, developers with GameMaker: Studio PROFESSIONAL will be required to purchase the Tizen Export module to publish games.