YoYo Games today announced its cross-platform game development software GameMaker: Studio is expanding its reach and will support both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 for developers.

This is only the latest in a series of high-profile updates for GameMaker: Studio, which launched in May. YoYo Games is the latest among software providers to announce their inclusion of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 compatibility for cross-platform game development, as both Unity and Adobe have revealed similar plans. GameMaker: Studio, however, is specifically designed to make creating games on multiple platforms as cost-efficient as possible.

CEO Sandy Duncan tells us that with GameMaker: Studio, a developer can create a game in the software and launch it for a wide variety of platforms with minimal effort and cost. During a demonstration with a demo game in the software, he shows how all users need to do is select the format they want to put the game onto and then click a compile button, showing us the game in both HTML5 and on a new Android Nexus 7 tablet. This allows developers to develop a game at minimal expense (he says most titles are created for “well under $50,000 a game”) while distributing it as broadly as possible.

“Game publishing has become a non-intuitive business,” Duncan tells us. “Even if you have success like Rovio, it’s very hard to use that success to help your next game.” Duncan is talking about Rovio’s latest iOS release, Amazing Alex. Even though the game’s been critically well-received, it hasn’t replicated the lightning-in-a-bottle success of Angry Birds; our AppData traffic-tracking service shows Amazing Alex is the No. 90 top paid app, No. 52 top paid game and the No. 330 top grossing game in the iTunes App Store.

Duncan tells us GameMaker: Studio for Windows 8 will be available for developers before October 26, while Windows Phone 8 compatibility will launch sometime later this year.