Why isn't Microsoft porting its older Touch/Tablet apps to Windows 8?

Posted by jhoff80 on October 10, 2012 04:04 pm 5

I mentioned this in passing in the "Win8 official apps updates" thread, but the more I think about this, the more ridiculous it is.

Why would Microsoft not take advantage of the touch-based stuff it already has, and port that to Windows 8?

The Windows 7 "Touch Pack" consisted of a handful of touch-optimized apps that it makes no sense to not be in the Windows 8 Store:

Blackboard was a pretty good physics puzzler that's pretty similar to Rovio's "Amazing Alex."

Garden Pond was a game about origami boats that's a little tough to explain (mostly because I didn't fully understand it).

Rebound was a multi-touch enabled air hockey game where each player had an expandable electric paddle that they controlled with two fingers that was really good.

Surface Globe was a Google Earth equivalent that had much better touch functionality than the current Bing Maps app.

Surface Collage was a app to put together collages which I would think would be helped greatly by the Pictures filepicker and the Share charm.

Finally, Surface Lagoon was a touch-enabled interactive screensaver.

They would all be great additions for what Microsoft currently has, even if the games don't get Xbox Live support. For that matter, Microsoft has even older apps that worked great on tablets, like their "Ink Crossword" app, which actually utilized their built-in handwriting recognition so that someone could complete a crossword naturally with a pen the way that they're used to.

Similarly, there was an "Ink Sudoku" coding demo for UMPCs back in the day, which again would be a great demo for the Surface Pro. There were a couple other as well, a flashcard app, an app that let you draw on the desktop, and I'm probably forgetting others.

Anyway, I totally understand the idea of letting third-parties handle missing apps, but at the same time, why completely abandon code that you already have that works great?