What's the point of a Windows 8 App Store that doesn't sell traditional Windows Apps?

[/caption] So, it’s being reported that tomorrow Microsoft is about to share details about their upcoming Windows 8 App store. While the store itself will not be released until 2012, there are some details that it’s reasonable to extrapolate.

• It will be a way for developers to release their apps
• It will be a way for developers to get paid for the apps that they do develop
• The store will support free and paid apps, as well as trial versions and in-app payments.
• Businesses will also be able to make available internal apps to their workers using the store mechanism.

There was something that’s being reported that strikes me as downright stupid if true. This from FoxNews:

Traditional Windows apps will continue to be sold in the same way they have been — directly from developers and through online and brick and mortar stores. The store will not be a way for users to directly purchase older-style Windows apps but developers of those apps can create a landing page for those apps so they can be found in and linked to from the store.

I guess that there’s something I’m missing here. You have a store where you have access to hundreds of millions of users and you limit the types of applications that can be sold there to Metro style apps? I know that Microsoft are trying really hard for people to buy into this Metro thing but um, there are 500 million + users of Windows 7 right now and it seems to me that those people want apps too. It seems to me that making the store as large as possible and encouraging as many vendors to sell through that store as possible makes the most sense. I can see that having traditional apps as well as Metro apps means exponentially more work for Microsoft to do in terms of maintenance and oversight but still…. What say you?  ]]>