Making money with your apps through the Windows Store
keeping with the preview nature of the Windows 8 releases to date. At Windows 8 RTM (Release To Manufacturing), all developers signing …
Context & Ripple Effects
This post is the third beat in Microsoft's staged reveal of the Windows Store: the store was first previewed back in December 2011, then shipped to testers with May's Release Preview, and now — with Windows 8 approaching RTM — Microsoft is finally telling developers how they get paid. The details landing now matter because RTM is the point where the developer funnel has to convert into an actual catalog.
The story traveled unusually wide for an MSDN developer-blog post: The Next Web, Gizmodo, the Seattle Times and others all picked it up on the same day, with coverage zeroing in on flexible revenue cuts, list prices up to $999, and try-before-you-buy — evidence that store economics, not just the OS, had become part of the Windows 8 story.
First-order effects
- Developers signing at RTM get concrete commercial terms for the first time — a revenue split, a price ceiling high enough for premium software, and trial support — so they can finally model whether porting an app to Windows 8 pays.
- Microsoft gets what it needs most before launch: a way to seed the Store with paid inventory, since a storefront without purchasable apps undermines the entire Metro app pitch.
Second-order effects
- Apple and Google's stores become the explicit benchmark developers will use to judge Microsoft's cut and pricing flexibility, forcing the incumbents' terms into the comparison every time a developer allocates engineering time across platforms.
- Pricing freedom up to $999 signals Microsoft courting professional and line-of-business software, not just games and utilities — pulling categories that previously ignored app stores into store distribution.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the curated store with platform-set commerce terms becomes the default distribution channel for a desktop OS, not just a mobile one — making the store operator, not the retailer or the developer's own website, the economic gatekeeper for Windows software.
- Store terms turn into a durable competitive lever between operating systems: revenue splits, trial mechanics, and listing rules become features developers shop for, much like API breadth once was.
The trend: PC platform vendors are importing mobile-style curated store economics — platform-controlled payments, tiered cuts, and trials — as the primary commercial channel for desktop software.