The Windows Store for Windows 8 is quite young. Some developers have already managed to try it in, others have not yet decided. Today I want to tell a little about how this app store looks from the inside, namely from the point of view of the developer.

As one of the very young app stores, the Windows Store, in theory, should have absorbed the very best from Google Play and the App Store. But in practice it turned out that this did not happen.

Let's start with registration. During registration, you must specify the basic information, specify your country and pay a small fee. Attention, then the country can not be changed.
')

Tax Return (Tax Profile)

In order to start selling paid applications you need to fill out a tax return. The form can be filled in online: send it by mail or fax it is not needed anywhere. The whole point is not the point. After filling out the form, you can see the following scenic view:


Try to guess what the inscription means: “Your tax return is filled out incorrectly. Please correct the errors . ”



After 3 failed form fillings, I had to ask Google why my form was wrong. The forum found a hint. The caption "Your tax return is filled out incorrectly. Please correct the errors " actually means the following " We received your form and will check it soon " (Well, how can I guess from the first time). And indeed the next day the inscription Valid appeared near it.

Add an application

Clicking on the button “Add application” (Submit an app) a very nice screen appears, where all the steps that need to be done are indicated.

app name

As for me, it is not very logical. The application name must be specified when building the application in Visual Studio. If your name is localized in different languages, the translation must be specified at the time of assembly. Then all the name that you specified during the assembly, you must manually reserve on the tab the name of the application. If you forget to reserve one of the names, the application packages will not be accepted for the reason that the name is not registered.

Information for sale

Probably the only thing that I liked in the Windows Store is the Trial mode feature for paid applications. You specify the price and period of Trial, after which the user will be asked to purchase the full version. The most wonderful thing is that for this you do not need to make any changes to the application itself. Windows Store takes care of everything.

In-app purchases

It is 2013, and Windows Store does not know how to make Consumable purchases (purchases that can be made an unlimited number of times: game currency, tips, etc.). But he knows how to make purchases with a shelf life. I do not quite understand their purpose, this is not exactly a subscription. But thanks to them, the developers were able to use the crutch for the sale of "coins". Instead of the product 100_coins, the product 100_coins.1, 100_coins.2, is clogged for a period of one day. And these products are sold in a circle.

Game Certificates

Absolutely separate song. Although it relates only to games, but you should pay attention. There are countries for distribution in which you must provide a certificate confirming the minimum age of the player. (Information about the certificate for Russia in the next topic )

Here the worst solution was chosen. If you forget to upload a certificate, for example for Brazil, but at the same time accidentally noted it in the list of countries for distribution, then you will learn about the error only five days after checking the application. Why is this the worst decision?



It could be solved in other ways. Firstly, in the absence of a certificate, suggest that you put the age of 18+ for that country, as, for example, Samsung Apps Store does. Secondly, in the absence of a certificate, prohibit sending for verification until the certificate is uploaded or a tick is removed.

Description of the application

After downloading the binary files, you will be asked to fill in the application description for each language into which the application has been translated.

The list of languages ​​is made "very" convenient. Try to quickly find the language for which the description was not completed?



Now it is very important that it is necessary to translate into those languages ​​that are supported by the application and cannot be translated into others, otherwise the application will not pass certification. That is, the description must be in those and only those languages ​​that the application supports.

Now about the design. For the application, you can specify key features. One feature in one input field. Unfortunately, no one thought that composing text and translating would not be done when uploading an application, but in advance. And copying each line into a separate field is not the most interesting task.



The same goes for tags.



After all, tags could be separated by commas, and key features could be entered into one field just one feature per line.

Next in line are screenshots. Everything is difficult with them. First, under each screenshot you need to add a comment about what is shown in the screenshot. The comment must be in the language of description. Secondly, if the screenshot accidentally turns out to be a word that does not correspond to the current language, the application will be rejected. And thirdly, if by lucky chance you have a screenshot without text, you can not rejoice, because in one click you can download it for all languages ​​at once, it will not work anyway. It is necessary to add the same picture to each language.

Well, instead of completing, Windows Store does not like the email address with a plus sign, but in vain.

Completion

I would not be able to say that I could have fun while completing the quest: publish the application in the Windows Store. I was haunted by the feeling that the developers here do not like.

If I have forgotten about something, or I have described something too incomprehensibly, then I will gladly answer questions in the comments. If the reader is interested in reading a similar article about other app stores: Google Play, iTunes, Samsung Store, Amazon Store, then I also wait for comments in the comments.