Microsoft joins anti-Apple coalition with the exception of Xbox

Microsoft promises competing developers that it will not reject them from the Microsoft Store, and that it will not reject developers based on their revenue model. The company joins the Coalition for App Fairness, but does not enforce the rules for the Xbox, and Microsoft has established rules for itself setting out policies for the Microsoft Store. These rules state, among other things, that developers can always publish their app in the Store, even if it competes with Microsoft software. Microsoft also promises that it will not refuse an app because of the earnings model or payment methods that a developer implements, or because of the way in which an app releases content, for example if it is done on a device itself or if it is streamed from the cloud. also that app developers can always communicate directly with their customers, that Microsoft is’ transparent about Store policies around promotion and marketing ‘, and that the company always charges’ reasonable amounts that do justice to the competition we receive from other app stores Microsoft’s guidelines are largely based on those of the Coalition for App Fairness. This is an organization to which dozens of software developers have now joined. The CAF started after a long-running dispute between Spotify and Apple that also involved Epic Games in recent weeks. Those two companies started the coalition. It is about the strict rules that Apple imposes on developers for the use of the App Store, and the thirty percent of the revenue that developers have to pay for it. Microsoft doesn’t call Apple by name, but does say it has “ more often expressed concerns in the past about app stores on other platforms. ” Microsoft says the new rules only apply to Windows, where it refers to alternative stores such as Steam and the Epic Store. However, the guidelines do not apply to the Xbox. “Consoles are specialized devices optimized for a specific purpose,” Microsoft writes. “The business model for consoles is very different from that on PCs and phones. Console makers invest a lot of money in hardware and sell it below cost to create a market that game developers and publishers can take advantage of.” Because of those ‘fundamental differences’, Microsoft wants to ‘work more to establish the correct guidelines for game consoles’.