Developers are 'ignoring' the Windows Store because for existing Win32 applications (or applications rooted in large Win32 codebases), Win32 is just fine withou

Developers are 'ignoring' the Windows Store because for existing Win32 applications (or applications rooted in large Win32 codebases), Win32 is just fine without a rewrite, while greenfield applications usually target other platforms like iOS and Android where users have been used to the app paradigm from very early on, and are more prone to dropping a few dollars on a download or microtransactions. Furthermore, despite Win32 apps being able to clobber your files and settings, users don't seem to be demanding a change. This leaves UWP apps in the awkward middle ground, where high-quality software doesn't need to be UWP, and you can still make successful software without ever targeting Windows, and thus the Windows Store is full of both shovelware and a baseline of obligatory applications that MS persuaded to fill out the store, with few true gems inbetween. Tim Sweeney's crusade is entirely ideological, and is largely misplaced: MS is, perhaps strangely, the good guys who will be ruthlessly obsoleted by more locked-down platforms if they don't have an equivalent play. Windows 10's SaaSification was widely derided and yet many of those same detractors use Android phones where your habits and preferences were mined from the start, or iOS which has no way of sideloading software outside of the vendor's own storefront. 10 years out in an alternate timeline where high-powered ChromeAndroidBooks and iPadMacProAirs make up the computing landscape, his frustrations with Microsoft will seem silly.