Ask HN: Have you released software on the Microsoft store?

6 points·groundCode··4 comments

I'm curious about whether anyone has released software through Microsoft's app store? What was your experience like? Was it profitable?

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I released a puzzle game on the Microsoft Store last year. I have to admit I had fairly modest expectations from this platform -- I was also releasing my game on a couple of other platforms and I did not expect many sales from the Microsoft Store in particular. It turned out to be a great choice -- they briefly featured our game, but even if you ignore the sales from that period, the Microsoft store has accounted for about 70% of our sales overall. I've also found their payout system to be really straightforward and easy to work with compared to some other large platforms.

The whole process was reasonably straightforward. It was a bit of a pain getting the build properly set up, removing certain incompatible API calls and getting all the icon files and all the other little settings and details in the exact configuration that the system expected so the store would accept the product. But it's probably about as much of a pain as building something through XCode and uploading to Apple's store.

The game I made is called Omnicube, link here for anyone who'd like to check it out: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/omnicube/9njcwkrx4mmh

Does such a Microsoft's app store for Microsoft's Windows Phone still exist?

Microsoft's store also includes Windows. A customer base that tends to attach a dollar value to operating systems probably has some potential for a business based on paid software.

No.

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