Preface

GamesIndustry International (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-01-14-mobile-gaming-to-push-industry-above-USD100-billion-by-2017) states that by 2017, the global gaming business will be worth more than $100 billion. Out of this, the mobile and online gaming business with a compounded annual growth rate of 23.6 percent will be generating $60 billion.

The mobile phone as a gaming device, although new, is rapidly growing. Every day, there are new independent developers and small start-ups creating amazing games. They almost simultaneously release their games at different stores supporting different platforms to increase revenue.

Creating cross-platform games used to be a tedious task before. You had to code in different languages that were native to that device's OS, which could take a month for each platform. With Cocos2d-x, cross-platform game development is more accessible, as it is free and completely open source. With the same C++ code and resources, you can code once and deploy on different devices, such as Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Mac, Linux, Tizen, Win32, WinRT, and Windows Phone.

This book will show you how to create a cross-platform game from the ground up on a Windows machine for a Windows Phone. Apart from how to develop a game, the book will also cover how to publish the game on the Windows Phone Store and port the same game to different platforms, showcasing the true power of Cocos2d-x.