Instead of paying per app, would make more sense to let devs keep 90% of store revenue, which would incentivize the development of apps that are actually popular and make money.

Hell, let developers keep 100% of store revenue, at least until you have a customer base.

It's not much worse for MS than 90%, and it makes a much nicer marketing story if you're trying to convince developers to get on your platform.

It was a slight eye opener for me as a student at the time getting near graduation. The part of the workshop going through the app submittal and approval process was actually really interesting, but when it became clear that the bigger effort was to boost app numbers in the store things felt really dirty.

Either way that experience always comes up for me whenever people talk about the low quality of apps on the Windows store.

> "We have millions more apps than the competition."

> leaves out the fact that 99% of them are either web wrappers or low quality games

This is why we have confounding factors, kids.

Even with paying out this money for shovelware they never matched up to Apple's app store numbers.

I had a Surface Pro 3 at the time and there were maybe 10 apps worth using on a touchscreen. Eventually gave up and sold it to get a Mac and iPad.