Yes, basically when Longhorn started to fail to meet expectations, there were two possible ways, do what Google did with Android, push forward no matter what to make it work, or forcing a rewrite into something else, which is what WinDev ended up doing.

"What Really Happened with Vista"

https://hackernoon.com/what-really-happened-with-vista-4ca7f...

"Turning to the past to power Windows’ future: An in-depth look at WinRT"

https://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/windows-8-and-winrt...