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Microsoft Hopes Money Will Entice More Developers (engadget.com)
At Build conference, Microsoft announced that starting later this year, all consumer apps (except games) sold in the Microsoft Store will ship a whopping 95 percent of the revenue earned from app and in-app purchases to the developer. From a report: That is, if the customer purchases the app via a deep or direct link. If the customer gets your app via a Microsoft-assisted method, like getting featured on the Microsoft Store, then devs will get 85 percent of the revenue, which is still a pretty good amount.
Software developers need to eat, and Microsoft's 95% revenue share will benefit thousands of small developers along with the larger companies. The notion that only free software is good software is myopic at best; the open source work I've done has only been possible because I earn a good salary from a commercial software company.
Lets say that the total cost of developing my app is 70 currency units - 5 programmers worked on it, I had to pay them and myself a salary for 2 years. And the app then sells for 100 currency units
Well there's your problem right there. If you really wanted 30 units of profit you should have charged 115 units for it on the App Store (well really a little more but you get the gist).
It's not like expenditure and profit are not intertwined; you could also have reduced costs of production by buying crappy paddles for your ping-pong table.
But 15 units of profit is STILL A PROFIT. And 15% of some much, much larger number is still in absolute terms much larger than 30% of a much smaller number...
Does that make economic sense? Giving up a whopping 50% of the potential profit margin for an app to MS, for a little product page on their App store?
When the "little product page" enables millions of people literally one click away from purchase (because they have registered payment methods) to see your product, then HELL YES that makes sense because you have an order of magnitude (or more) chance of a sale.
You seem to have forgotten how hard it is to sell software to real people.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I see Microsoft more like the Cool kid from high school, who became a looser when he grew up. Who actively is trying to relive their glory days.
But those Apple and Google Nerds, ended up on top, and now they are trying to fit in again.
The App store idea is more or less opposed to the core Microsoft main selling point. "We have all the software you could possible want to run it" By having a Microsoft store, it is cutting into that idea, because they are trying to say, we only want you to use the approved Microsoft products.
In general the App Store isn't a bad idea. Even Linux with APT and Snap is a similar process where software shown to be "safe","works", and "worth while" is posted on the store, giving you a safe place to get your software. However the issue has been, is what each store owner considers safe, works and worth while, is a crap shoot.
Lets say I build a better copy and paste feature for Windows. Microsoft may reject it because it overrides a windows built in functionality, thus considered unsafe, or they will have those features in the next version of Windows (probably after seeing what I did in my program) and reject it as not worth while because that feature will be there soon.
The Apple store is notorious for this.
But for most developers they program for windows because they have too, because that is where the customers are, not because of any sense of loyalty to Microsoft. The App store for Microsoft vs. Selling by yourself, or on amazon.... Is just too cumbersome. While 15% is a bit high. However the biggest expense is the uncertainty.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.