Microsoft’s Windows Store has been struggling to attract developers for years now, and Microsoft is now radically overhauling how it takes a revenue cut from app developers. At Microsoft’s Build developers conference this week, the software maker is changing its Microsoft Store policies to allow developers to keep 95 percent of the revenue from their apps. This is a big change from the 70 percent that developers currently get to keep, and it’s clearly designed to encourage developers to create apps for Windows 10.
There are some catches for developers, though. The new 95 percent cap will only be available on consumer apps and not games, and Microsoft switches it to 85 percent if the company helped a developer obtain a customer through marketing in the Microsoft Store. Still, the change from 70 percent to 95 percent is significantly better than Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store. Google and Apple both offer 70 percent to developers, and they increase that to 85 percent if a consumer subscribes to an app for a year or more.
The new Microsoft Store policy will apply to apps for Windows 10, Windows Mixed Reality, Windows Phone, and Surface Hub, but will exclude the Xbox One. Microsoft says it will make the 95 percent revenue share structure available later this year, and it will apply to all apps currently available on the store.
Comments
Hope that helps MS’s app situation but I don’t think at this stage it will force the hand of the 2 "giants". It’s smart strategy though.
By pboardman on 05.08.18 9:33am
To little to late I guess…
By T.E.D. on 05.28.18 4:34pm
What does Canada want?
- We want more money.
- More money?
- More money, give us some of that internet money.
Sorry couldn’t resist
By siavosh.taba on 05.08.18 9:34am
95% of zero is still zero.
They needed to do this about 8 years ago.
By cybersaurusrex on 05.08.18 9:39am
Is undercut the appropriate word here?
By afaintglow on 05.08.18 10:20am
Overjoin?
By mkumar12345 on 05.08.18 11:10am
Too late.
By jdawgnoonan on 05.08.18 10:25am
MS has does the whole money thing a number of times in the past and it’s never worked. It screams desperation.
By JBDragon on 05.08.18 10:43am
Are you under the impression that they don’t know they are desperate? That they don’t know that the public knows?
They needs apps, they will do this to get them, suck it up.
By EleMenTfiNi on 05.10.18 1:08am
Yeah, I don’t see this working.
Windows is just too open, and has been for decades. There is no incentive to share revenue with Microsoft.
The majority of software in the world that costs more than $100 (finance, science, engineering, CAD, animation, photography, video, architecture, software development, simulation, etc…) is already sold to Windows PC users, but they sell it independently and get to keep all the money themselves.
Mathworks, Dassault, or ANSYS isn’t going to share 5% of their $100,000/yr license fees with Microsoft…
Popularity is the power of the open ecosystem, but it means that you can’t monetize it to anywhere near the extent of a walled garden.
By Turbofrog on 05.08.18 11:00am
The incentive is for people like me, who have a few apps as a hobby, and don’t really have the means to set up hosting, payment, and licensing servers. Microsoft/Apple/Google/Valve/etc. takes care of all that, all I have to do is push a few buttons. To me, that’s the benefit of these app stores.
By Entegy on 05.08.18 3:05pm
Good, because stealing 30% of a developers funds while doing nothing is terrible. The cost for Apple/Google to put a developer’s app on their store does not come close to what they take, their stores are useless with developers.
By AdamMahase on 05.08.18 11:05am
I don’t know, money talks! And it talks loud at times. Yeah they did it before, but with crappy carry through and no commitment to a new business model. This MIGHT be different this time. It might be worth investing the time and money into porting a properly designed existing Apple or Android app to Windows.
Starting from scratch? Maybe not so much right now, but established titles looking for new revenue might want to consider it. Still a LOT of Windows users out there, and something that can interface with their iPhone, or Moto might find a warm welcome.
By Glen Barrington on 05.08.18 11:16am
V v v very late. Like should have been done in 2014 late. Yet, a good step.
By mcbhargav on 05.08.18 11:17am
Perfect Microsoft move: A great idea that just isn’t gonna work in reality.
By Ollieollieollie on 05.08.18 11:38am
They need to change how the app store works with install and backup. I stopped using the Microsoft store with games as it was too much of a pain in the butt to see what I had, and to back them up, and to see them in the drives that they were installed.
Let me see a folder with my apps in it. Let me drag and drop them to backup and install. I don’t need to get inside the apps.
By Alistair.B on 05.08.18 5:25pm
A developer will still make more money on iOS even if Apple took a 90% cut.
By Swazaloo on 05.08.18 9:31pm
Even more on Google Play
By forwardisstilltheonlyway on 05.08.18 11:27pm
Microsoft should have done that in the first place or just charge 0% when Windows 8 first came out. Nickle and dime your developers unless you have commanding power to strong arm developers to hand over 30% of revenue is just silly while they can just do old application without all the fuss.
By convergentwatt on 05.08.18 10:10pm