Microsoft Lays Out Money-Making Options For Windows Store Developers

tsamsoniw writes "With the release of Windows 8 just around the corner, Microsoft is eager to see its Windows Store well stocked with third-party, Metro-friendly apps. Hoping to get developers on board, the company has announced pricing structure, along with guidance and tools to help developers create trial versions of apps and set up lucrative in-app purchases."

Comments

Re:Fags and spics

[kurt555gs]

Actually, I just got a Nexus 7 tablet. M$ is done for. Apple should be scared.

Re:Fags and spics

[thetoadwarrior]

A smaller tablet with a lower resolution and all the ipad benefits (ie no SD card) and it's all controlled by an advertiser that wants me to hand over all my personal data. Where do I sign up?

I'm Sick Of Apps and Ecosystems.

[Tackhead]

Remember the good old days, when shareware developers built stuff that ran natively and didn't phone home?

When open source developers built stuff that compiled natively and couldn't phone home?

Yeah, Pepperidge farm and I remember.

But then came "downloaders" (Look, Adobe Acrobat XYZ is only 1MB, never you mind the 90MB the 1MB "installer" is downloading in the background.)

And finally came "apps" and "ecosystems", a world in which instead of having a locally-hosted .src.tar.gz/installer/executable that the user can install for him or herself, it all goes away to "the cloud", because it's just a bunch of HTML5 running in a stripped-down web browser that dignifies itself by calling itself a "container".

I'm either getting old and becoming a luddite, or this industry has really taken a turn for the worse. Probably a little of both.

Re:I'm Sick Of Apps and Ecosystems.

[Sarten-X]

You and me both, kid...

Frankly, what concerns me most about today's software ecosystem is the lack of concern for possession. Between subscription models and cloud services, paying for something gets you limited-time access in exchange for a permanent loss of money.

Once upon a time, you could buy a program (or a license to it) and reasonably expect that the program would remain functional for the foreseeable future. Sure, it might not have the latest features or be compatible with the latest machine, but it'd work one way and stay that way. Now you've got a new interface to web apps every month, no expectation of permanence, and no recourse if your work disappears in a "service interruption".

From an economics standpoint, I fear that this impermanence is devaluing the entire software industry. Since customers aren't getting anything permanent in exchange, they aren't as willing to pay as much (or anything) to purchase it. Since software is now expected to cost $10 or less for a mobile device, the notion that software is cheap is reinforced with every purchase made on a whim. Eventually the tragedy of the commons takes over, and the assumption is made that because the software costs so little to acquire, it also costs so little to produce. In turn, the pressure for low-profit software means there's no budget left for silly things like testing or support.

Call me a cranky old fart if you like, but I'm starting to miss the days where software cost $10,000, but if you needed a bug fixed, you could get a technician on site to fix it in an hour. Sure it'd cost you another few hundred dollars, but it's still better than today's model where, if you're lucky, a bug that halts production might get a response after two weeks of jumping through customer service hoops in a third-world call center.

Now get off my lawn.

Whereas you kept 100% revenues before...

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Whereas you kept 100% revenues before, now you get to pay us 30% off the top AND rewrite your software, while pissing off your existing base (who still runs XP whenever they can).

What's not to like?

Re:Whereas you kept 100% revenues before...

[westlake]

Whereas you kept 100% revenues before, now you get to pay us 30% off the top....

You can be a very good programmer and a very bad salesman.

To move your Windows product you had to place it where people would see it. Where it would stand out from the crowd. Places like Download,com

You wanted entry into big box retail? Think 60 percent off the top and you'll be closer to the truth, .

Re:Well see the best way is this

[Anonymous Coward]

If you just want to see somebody else win, then it's more logical to root for Apple since they're closer to winning.

I did root for Apple for a long time until they started acting like little bitches with the patent bullshit.

Will Windows 7 still be available in 2013?

[cpu6502]

Will we still be able to get it, or should we buy our copies now?

Re:Once the market matures

[Nerdfest]

Since iOS.

Re:Well see the best way is this

[Nerdfest]

And the proprietary connectors, and pretending to be police. Doing the embrace, extend, (with proprietary extensions of course) on perfectly good open standards (FaceTime, AirPlay, ePub) made MS look like amateurs at being evil as well.

Re:Once the market matures

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Ballmer is an old piece of shit that needs to die.

Re:Once the market matures

[hairyfeet]

But the elephant in the room that nobody seems to be willing to accept is this....how many PCs do you honestly believe are gonna be sold with touchscreens?

As we saw recently both AMD and Intel are reporting worse projections for sales this year and yet we are supposed to believe that the answer is RAISING prices, in a dead economy, to throw on touchscreens? Really? Look at the prices for touchscreens folks they ain't cheap. Sure you can get a buggy PITA resistive but its still gonna cost a good $75-$100 more than the same screen without and as we all know resistive sucks ass. Even with economies of scale and the OEMs shaving to the bone for decent capacitive touchscreens in laptops and desktops you are talking a good $150+ more than current units cost.

Let me tell ya that as a PC retailer in the trenches, and talking to other retailers that frankly the "sweet spot" for a good 75%+ of your PC sales out there are between $350-$500, with the biggest sellers being the $400-$450 laptops. Go into any B&M that sells PCs and count how many AMD laptops you see, the stores will be full of them because that's the only way to hit the crucial price point with Intel pushing chips that are frankly too expensive as it is.

Mark my words....windows 8? The new MS Bob. The market simply won't support the price point required to move to touchscreens, not when so many are already afraid and living check to check. The OEMs certainly aren't gonna close their doors just because MSFT wants to be Apple, so they will either tell MSFT to do the same move they did when Vista flopped, that is to allow them to just keep selling Win 7 with a Win 8 DVD dropped in the box, or frankly they'll start talking to Google and Canonical. I have to wonder if it was a coincidence that Dell suddenly started talking Ubuntu again as it gives them leverage.

Its just not gonna work folks, windows 8 SUCKS without a touchscreen and we all know this. I wish i had bookmarked the article I saw praising win 8, it may have been WinSupersite, where they said "See how easy win 8 is? Now to show how well it runs on old hardware we'll use this touchscreen Athlon 64 laptop to run it" and I about died because that said it all right there. Without touch win 8 sucks and with a worldwide recession people simply aren't gonna shell out an extra 30%-40%+ they don't have for units with touchscreens.