
Developers offered 80 percent cut of Windows Store app sales - ukdm
http://www.geek.com/articles/news/developers-offered-80-percent-cut-of-windows-store-app-sales-2011127/
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ebbv
The title is misleading, you only get to the 80% level once your application
is fairly successful ($25k in sales.) Below that it's 70/30 just like others.

Whether this is something worth pursuing or not is hard to judge at this point
as we do not know what the adoption rate of Windows 8 is going to be. In
particular what the adoption rate of the new Metro interface for Windows 8
will be.

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MatthewPhillips
It's going to be the default interface for every new PC. It can be a Vista
style flop and still be a gigantic market for developers.

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johnbender
The $49 developer membership is less exciting when you consider that MS
charges $479 for the least expensive version of Visual Studio and more for an
MSDN membership. And while I'm aware the the express version is free it seems
odd to me to charge for developer tools used by hobbyists and individuals at
all.

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cgag
Not getting into the visual studio thing, what's the logic behind charging
someone to develop apps that you get a 70% (for the first 25k at least) cut
from?

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code_duck
Similarly, Apple charges $100/year for the iOS Developer Program. At least
Xcode is only $5.

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tpatke
This is an iterative improvement. Not a revolution. Microsoft has some serious
catching up to do here and I would like to see a little more innovation coming
from MSFT's camp. "Hey, nobody is really using our platform, but you can save
fifty-bucks" isn't really going to cut it.

How about - MSFT covers all costs for the first 2 years (keep 100% of what you
make)? Heck, even a contest with some real prizes would be something...

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mcantelon
It's hard to believe they charge any fee for devs when they're attempting to
compete against Android, which charges $0/year for tools.

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qeorge
True, but you have to pay to publish on Android Market. IIRC its $100/year.

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king_jester
This is incorrect. There is a one time payment of $25 to publish for the
Android Market. The iTunes store has a $100/year fee to publish to the iTunes
store.

[http://www.google.com/support/androidmarket/developer/bin/an...](http://www.google.com/support/androidmarket/developer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=113468)

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nsxwolf
This reminds me a bit of the working for Radio Shack come-on... They tell you
it's minimum wage plus commission. Then your first check comes and you find
out it was minimum wage OR commission, whichever is higher.

$25,000 is a pipe dream for the vast, vast majority of mobile apps.

~~~
freehunter
And the vast, vast majority of mobile apps aren't worth the $0.99 they charge
for them. I don't have a problem with people making fewer shitty apps.

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shimon_e
Probably not going to last. When Google launched checkout it had better rates
than paypal. After a few years it ended up matching paypal. When Amazon
started selling music online it was 89 cents a song. Now it is on par with
iTunes.

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dazbradbury
Link to Microsoft blog (source):
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2011/12/06/anno...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2011/12/06/announcing-
the-new-windows-store.aspx)

Already Posted (yesterday): <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3322320>

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zerostar07
Why so small reduction? The 30% cut that apple, google and facebook require is
arbitrary and absurd already. The fair cost is much less than that and should
be coming down with competition now that platforms are becoming commodities.
(Oddly it's something that developers don't complain much about).

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dpark
Probably because it's been demonstrated that people are willing to pay the
30%. I'm a touch surprised that Microsoft is dropping to 20% for big players,
considering that's where the money is. My guess is they're keeping it at 30%
for small players because that's where most of the cost will be. It costs the
same to put an app through the review process whether it sells one copy or one
million copies.

Also, the current platforms are kind of the opposite of a commodity.
Commodities are interchangeable.

Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft, but have no visibility into their Windows
Store pricing.

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mdonahoe
If they want to attract more people, it should be free/cheap until you make a
certain amount of money. They might have to put restrictions on the number of
apps you submit, or charge for app reviews.

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erkin_unlu
i still think they have to make the conditions much nicer for win developers,
recognizing the gap between apple store, android market and the baby win
store.

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kennethologist
Time for my to pull out my visual studio!

