Actually, you could already use ReactNative with Windows, but there were some quirks.

I just run the packager, with watchman and flow disabled, and it works pretty well. The VS Android emulator is free and so much faster than the default emulator - thats why i use Windows to create Android apps atleast.

Thanks for the note. I'll admit that when I was Greenfield on my current project the "we don't support Windows" stuff on the react native homepage was enough to ward me off.

The timeline was to strict for me to risk running into a massive "gotcha."

Ionic was a known entity and the "we will deliver successfully" choice as opposed to the "it will be so cool if this works" choice.

In my heart I definitely wanted to make the cool choice... But pragmatism won out.