Microsoft: Windows Store Now Open to All Developers

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Microsoft has opened the Microsoft Store doors for all developers.

With Windows 8 inching closer to its October 26 launch date, the pieces leading up to the event are seemingly falling into place. The latest milestone to be reached resides within the Windows Store itself, as Microsoft is now giving all developers in 120 markets the green light to bring their apps to the blocky new "modern" OS.

"At every major Windows 8 development milestone – Release Preview, Consumer Preview, RTM – we’ve added markets toward our commitment to a truly global offering," writes Ted Dworkin, Partner Program Manager for the Store. "We often hear from those who don’t yet have support in their market, and we’ve said we’ll keep expanding. Today’s 82 additional markets more than doubles our support toward enabling developer opportunity everywhere there’s a developer with desire."

In addition to opening the doors to app submissions, all eligible MSDN subscribers will receive a free, one-year Windows Store developer account as part of their MSDN benefits – eligible subscriptions include Visual Studio Professional, Test Professional, Premium, Ultimate, and BizSpark. There's also a program for students – DreamSpark – that similarly waives the subscription fee, and an offer for businesses in Microsoft's BizSpark program.

"Getting started is easy," he writes. "Just go to the Windows Store Dashboard on the Windows Dev Center and sign up. The dev tools are free, the SDK is ready, and we have a ton of great supporting content to help you build your app and submit it for Store certification."

Dworkin says that Microsoft has seen "fantastic" interest throughout the Windows Store preview stage from the likes of individual developers, large development houses to component and service providers. The Redmond company also reports a great increase in both the number and diversity of apps seen in Windows Store even before the OS goes live and the first production Windows 8 PC hits the market.

"Sign up now, reserve your app names – we look forward to seeing your app in the Store in time for the general availability of Windows 8," he adds.

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Kevin Parrish
10 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Come join the windows .. blaa blaa

    ....
    ....
    ....
    .... crickets

    ..

    ...
    ...

    crickets
    Reply
  • You must be at the wrong windows... The Windows I joined has "funky town" playing! The party is going off!!!
    Reply
  • ojas
    I wonder how quickly Apple's 650k apps are going to start looking very, very small :lol:
    Reply
  • egidem
    I expect the first app to be developed/downloaded millions of times from the Windows Store is the one that returns the start menu back.
    Reply
  • dthx
    ojasI wonder how quickly Apple's 650k apps are going to start looking very, very smallGiven that 99% of those 650,000 applications currently on the Appstore are pretty fake (a "call my girlfriend" button, a "make farting noise" button, collections of city guides where each city is a separate app,...), we should focus on the 500 best downloads (and you're probably right egidem, the "give me my start menu back" app will sell like hot cakes!!!).
    What i see is that right now, all the major applications that realy matter are already available on IOS, Android and Windows as well (or will be very soon). What truly matters to me is the quality of the applications we use the most ...
    Reply
  • belardo
    And how many WP7 fart apps are out there? 3000 or so. many are duplicates.
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    Classic Shell, VisStart/ViOrb, Start8, with free start menu programs that are better than even MS's version in Windows 7 (Classic Shell can do much morethan just a start menu, it can even let you log in directly to the desktop and much more), why would you go to the MS store for such a program if you have Windows 8?
    Reply
  • ekho
    It's one more platform for developers, and also a competition to benefit consumers.
    Reply
  • jhansonxi
    One solution to the Metro problem is to use Explorer from Win7 on Win8 but only if you don't care about the store:
    http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/35189-Windows-7-explorer-for-Windows-8

    I haven't tried this myself.

    Who else remembers the old hack for using Explorer from Win95 on Win98 to get around the broken Internet Explorer integration?
    Reply
  • CaedenV
    jumpingCome join the windows .. blaa blaa................ crickets........cricketsconsidering the games store went from 120 apps to 233 in just 2 days, my bet is that MS is already flooded with app applications that need to go through the validation process.
    Reply