Windows 11 is actual, and Microsoft has simply revealed the brand-new app retailer that can go together with it — which could possibly be an enormous deal, seeing how earlier variations of the thought by no means actually caught on. It will likely be known as the Microsoft Store, not the Windows Store, similar to it has been since a rebranding in 2017.

Here are among the very first pictures of the brand new retailer. While Windows 11 was completely leaked in mid-June, that leak notably did not embody any glimpse of an up to date app retailer, so I determine you’re desperate to see the way it would possibly look!

The new retailer’s received a couple of companions on board: Adobe will supply its Creative Cloud suite, and Zoom and Disney Plus will likely be there. Microsoft will contribute its personal Visual Studio and name-dropped Microsoft Teams, Notepad and Paint for the shop, which does appear just a little odd because the latter two have lengthy been pre-installed apps, and the corporate simply introduced Teams will likely be immediately built-in into Windows.

In a significant transfer, Microsoft’s Panos Panay says builders will now have the ability to preserve one hundred pc of their income “if you do bring your own commerce engine” — not like app shops from Apple and Google that typically take 30 % of developer income and demand on their very own cost platforms and in-app purchases. We’ll need to see if that applies to video games as effectively, which Microsoft and different firms have typically handled individually from apps. If you do use Microsoft’s cost platform, the corporate confirms the income shares are 85/15 and 88/12 for apps and video games respectively.

Another large shock: the brand new Microsoft Store may also embody Android apps that may run in your Windows 11 PC, due to a partnership with Amazon and a few “Intel Bridge” know-how. The Amazon Appstore will stay contained in the Microsoft Store, and also you’ll have the ability to drag and pin these apps facet by facet conventional Windows apps in your laptop.

In a blog post, Microsoft introduces a pair different new options: if a web site needs you to put in a Windows app, it may well routinely pop up the Microsoft Store to deal with that set up. Microsoft may also have curated “stories” about new apps to spotlight these it deems worthy.

We’ve recognized since April that Microsoft might need been planning to overtake its Windows app retailer this yr, and as regular, the satan’s within the particulars: will it really be open to all apps and provides builders what they need and wish? The firm’s been haunted by its unique imaginative and prescient of a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) ever since Windows 8, when it architected the shop explicitly to deal with that new breed of cross-platform app as a substitute of the legacy Win32 applications that builders and lots of customers tended to choose.

Today, Panay mentioned whether or not you’re growing a UWP or conventional Windows app, the Microsoft Store is designed to deal with all of them. “We’re enabling developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) to bring their apps regardless of whether they’re built as a Win32, Progressive Web App (PWA), or Universal Windows App (UWP) or any other app framework, creating an opportunity to reach and engage with more people,” he writes, in a new blog post.

The firm had already buried the UWP dream in 2019 with the information that it might settle for native Win32 video games in its retailer, and it’s tried many different techniques to draw builders over time — together with revised insurance policies that enable app builders to maintain 95 % of app income, and extra not too long ago, 88 % of income from their video games. It’s additionally tried to decouple APIs so Win32 apps can benefit from trendy Windows options.

But on the finish of the day, Microsoft’s app retailer has by no means made a very convincing case for itself — to the purpose that the straightforward bundle supervisor Microsoft launched final May felt like a breath of recent air. Perhaps Windows 11’s retailer will, too.

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