It doesn't at the moment. .NET Native only applies to Windows Store (metro) apps. But in theory, it would work like a super-powered ngen.exe does (look up ngen

It doesn't at the moment. .NET Native only applies to Windows Store (metro) apps. But in theory, it would work like a super-powered ngen.exe does (look up ngen if you don't know). But instead of still requiring a runtime installed, .NET Native will also link in the required bits of the runtime statically (the GC for instance). This model is old and has been discussed quite a bit. Mono has supported it for a long time. MS has been ideologically opposed to it for over a decade and only just recently reversed their opinion, probably due to limited resources on low-end devices that MS has now realised are important.