Microsoft under fire for 30% cut on Windows 8 App Store software

Microsoft are under fire today for their announcement that they will be taking a 30 percent cut of all sales in the Windows 8 App Store. This will drop to 20 percent however once the software generates over $25,000.

The money grabbing doesn't stop there, as they want $49 from independent developers to register for the app store initially, before being able to even sell their software. Software development firms have a higher cost, with a registration fee of $99.

As seems to be the case lately, Microsoft are entering this market long after both Apple and Android have thriving online stores already in place. They issued a notice to try and redress this by saying they have 1.25 billion people using their operating system. Which is a fair point, if they all move immediately to Windows 8, when it is released. It is hard to gauge a percentage of users that will move when the new operating system is released, but it won't be close to the 1.25 billion figure.

Microsoft posted a blog message which said that the store will be available when the beta for the next generation Windows OS is released. All developers will get a “App Certification Kit” as part of the SDK. With this kit, Microsoft set out guidelines and instructions to explain to developers what they need to do, to get approved. Developers will also be supported, if their software gets rejected initially, with necessary changes to be made. The Android market suffers in this regard, as the ‘open' nature, leads to plenty of sub standard software being shared.

Kitguru says: Windows 8 Apps, at your fingertips. Sound good?

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