
My Windows 8 app approaching 100,000 downloads - recoiledsnake
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kevinash/archive/2012/10/31/my-windows-8-app-approaching-100-000-downloads.aspx
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meaty
The fact this is pumped out by someone with an MSDN blog makes me suspicious.
Very gushy. As a Microsoft gold partner, this gushiness is not universal. In
fact most of us are currently being fucked with extortionate licensing changes
and are considering bailing out.

For reference, out of our 5500 individual clients, we've got one single
windows 8 user and they're internal testing team. That spans pretty much
everyone from small businesses to corporations. We have seen a growth in win7
vs winxp though since win8 was released.

~~~
kenjackson
He's a Microsoft employee. It would take about 2 seconds to click the link on
his name to see that.

Are you implying he is lying? Half of the iOS posts are from folks like John
Gruber or Marco Arment. Are you suspicious when they write a post? Or when
someone from Mozilla writes a pro-Mozilla post, etc? Are you suspicious that
Apple may actually be bankrupt, because their earnings numbers come from a
suspicious source -- the Apple CFO?

In this case he's giving useful data to those on the fence about Win8
developement. I see no reason why an individual would lie, given he doesn't
even have corporate anonimity to hide behind.

With that said, the numbers look good and promising.

~~~
meaty
Yes I know, and from extensive experience, I'd trust the mouth of a 409
scammer more. Reputation as well as bad reputation are earned.

Re Apple: Bankrupt no - morally bankrupt perhaps.

Its not on the fence when MSFT issued Surface tabs to every staff member.

~~~
chokolad
Surfaces will be distributed to employees in late December.

~~~
meaty
I stand corrected :)

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jmspring
Sometimes the anti-MS sentiment here is almost as silly as the gushiness of
the MSDN blog post.

Given Windows8 sold upwards of 3million licenses within the first couple of
days (and probably many more now), 100k downloads of a card game app seems
pretty darn reasonable to me. This factor becomes even less surprising if the
app is promoted in the Win8 app store, or if it is one of the few card game
apps, etc. Also, this number is downloads, so maybe people grabbed it, checked
it out and deleted it. I haven't looked into specifics. But given the size of
the ecosystem, the number doesn't seem unreasonable.

To follow up on gushiness, as others have commented, this particular post was
on MSDN which is a Microsoft property. Microsoft has a pretty decent
infrastructure for developer support (and has had for a long while). A lot of
people working within the Microsoft development ecosystem like the tools, the
platform, etc. A person, employee or not, posting about his positive
experiences is to be expected.

For myself, I'm eh on Win8. I see the "Metro" interface as an oversized task
bar/start menu for what is a better/faster desktop experience. That said, I
mainly use my Mac. The developer tools from Microsoft, on the other hand, I
actually find are better overall than XCode, the android ecosystem, etc. For
an IDE, VS is pretty good.

~~~
logn
>A person, employee or not, posting about his positive experiences is to be
expected.

He's not only an employee, he's a mobile product evangelist.

~~~
jmspring
An evangelist who happens to have also gone through the effort to write an app
and submit it to the store.

Again, it's on MSDN, so not really surprising.

I'm not sure about Apple, but I know Google has developer evangelists as well.

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Animus7
Consumers may or may not "love windows 8" but this article is swimming in non
sequitur.

But I get it.

To frame this post in context, from my stint at Microsoft I saw how serious
points are awarded to those who beat the drums. Logic be damned; if your W8
app get 100K downloads and your glowing blog post makes the rounds it's a
favorable line item on your review.

So it's hard to comprehend for a lot of us, but when Microsoft says that
Windows 8 is the most openly developed operating system in the world, I think
they honestly believe it. Believing it brings tangible rewards.

~~~
ax
In truth, employees are not rated at all on whether their app gets downloads,
unless maybe you're one of the in-box apps. Apps like the one linked above are
covered under a moonlighting policy -- basically, feel free to create an
awesome app and sell it and keep the profits, but don't use any company
resources or time to make it happen[1]. Getting 100k downloads will absolutely
not factor in on your review.

Also, I'm not sure Windows 8 was ever marketed as the most openly developed OS
in the world. It IS the most open of any Microsoft OS to date, however, so
maybe that's why you are confused.

1) There were some exceptions to this rule I believe for WP8 apps but I'm not
entirely clear on the details.

(Microsoft employee)

~~~
shawnb576
Visibility is everything at MS. Is there a line item on your review for "W8
App d/l #s"? No absolutely not. Are there positive career effects for your
boss being able to say "yeah, so-and-so wrote an early Win8 app and got a
bunch of good reviews and X hundred thousand downloads and got it highlighted
in MSDN as an early win for the platform"? You'd better believe it.

(ex-MSFT, 14y)

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kevingadd
I don't know why the OP talks about a 'gold rush' when he's only showing
download numbers. If his in-app purchases actually convert at a reasonable
rate, THEN that'd be something.

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elliottkember
This article reeks of astroturfing, something I see a lot from the Microsoft
troupe. Other comments seem to support this. I get the feeling I'd like
Microsoft's products a lot more if they didn't try and fake this stuff.

~~~
wahnfrieden
If you click his name, he's an MS employee.

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adaml_623
The big difference between Apple and Android ecosystems that everybody spoke
about at the beginning was that Apple users were willing to pay for apps and
Android users were (in the beginning at least) less likely to pay up.

So here's the question for MS. Are your users willing to pay? The OP put up a
graph about in-app purchases with no scale on the y-axis. To me that implies
that there's no real money to show us yet. But I'm happy to be disproved.

~~~
iDroid
You are forgetting the ad revenue here. this seems like a big opportunity to
me.

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daveungerer
_"people older than 55 are not only satisfied with Windows Store apps user
experience, they are actually willing to pay money for premium features"_.

Or it could be that people older than 55 are the biggest market for card
games, regardless of platform? The entire article is filled with illogical
conclusions. Please don't post this bullshit on HN, articles that so grossly
underestimate their audience's intelligence are just irritating.

Flagged.

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Johngibb
This reads like an infomercial... like someone was paid to write it.

~~~
xutopia
I'm pretty sure the guy's an evangelist for Microsoft. The article seems so
over the top that it's infomercial territory.

~~~
kinble32
I agree. I think surface is pretty cool, but this is a little too positive.

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MrFoof
For those of you who will participate in a future platform with a day 1
launch... consider card games. There's a massive audience for them, which is a
great reason why he's seeing such exceptional performance. Of course, being
free also helps (as there's no friction).

If someone is looking at an app store on Day 1, for games, there's a chance
that they just want to play Solitaire, Freecell, or another card game. I give
this guy credit for recognizing that. Over time he'll likely see much more
than 100,000 downloads.

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eibrahim
I am jealous. I want a hockey-stick chart too :)... Thanks for sharing though,
I blogged my own numbers as well - see
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4770483>

spoiler, we did NOT get 100k downloads. not yet at least.

direct link: <https://bitly.com/ZaeRY9>

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libovness
Yes, and Karl Rove reported that Obama won Ohio. Don't trust the source.

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cooldeal
Obama did win Ohio...should we deny that fact just because Rove said it?

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Toshio
> "I now have some very hard numbers that support the fact that users from all
> age groups love Windows 8! First, the download and purchase stats."

Correlation doesn't imply causation. It could be that people downloaded your
app to distract themselves from the pain and frustration of using that
operating system.

