Gendai Games on Tuesday announced the addition of iPad publishing to its game creation tool GameSalad, enabling users to publish titles optimized for Apple’s latest product when it becomes available this weekend. Gendai also uploaded a pair of YouTube videos in support of the news: one showcases the tool in general, and the other features a developer, Joe Kauffman, who recently modified his game to run on the iPad.

GameSalad Creator is a free application, but users who want to deploy their games at the App Store need to pay US$99 a year ($299 for the enterprise version) to join Apple’s iPhone developer program. And if they want to create and deploy an unlimited number of games, they need to pay an annual GameSalad subscription: $99 for GameSalad Express and $1,999 for GameSalad Pro. However, both give game creators 100% of the royalties generated by their games at the App Store.

The pro version of the GameSalad subscription offers several additional benefits, including a custom loading screen (Express developers have to use a loading screen with the GameSalad logo); the ability to endorse web pages and other iPhone apps within the game; advanced analytics; integration with social networks, such as Facebook Connect capability; online leader boards using custom servers; and more.

GameSalad demo video