What you need to know
- Visual Studio 2019 and Visual Studio Code are now discoverable in the Microsoft Store.
- This marks the third new app from Microsoft to arrive after Microsoft Edge.
- Microsoft Teams is expected to be added to the Storefront soon.
The new Microsoft Store on Windows 11 (and soon Windows 10) is fast becoming a hub for all Windows desktop apps, whether those be UWP, Win32, or PWA. Microsoft is so adamant to show the world that this new Store is the real deal that it's even putting its own apps that previously weren't there into the storefront. This week, Visual Studio 2019 and Visual Studio Code have both showed up and can now be discovered directly in the Microsoft Store app.
These apps use the Store's new policies which allow Microsoft to submit them as unpackaged Win32 apps. The Store app will download an independent installer and install the program outside of the Store. This allows these apps to run as if they were downloaded from the web, meaning these apps can maintain their own updater and content delivery services.
Microsoft is expected to add more of its apps to the Microsoft Store over time. We've already seen the company list Microsoft Edge, and we expect to see Microsoft Teams at some point too. Now there's no limitations on the kind of apps that can be added to the storefront, it makes sense to see Microsoft (and indeed other developers) getting their apps into the store.
At this point, the storefront acts as a place for discovering desktop applications from across the web, and that's a good thing. Adobe is said to be bringing its Creative Cloud suite to the Store soon, and we'd love to see apps like Firefox or Google Chrome make their way too. In the meantime, what are your thoughts on this new Microsoft Store app so far? Do you think it's going to be successful for Microsoft?
Let us know in the comments.
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