Windows Subsystem for Android™ and the Amazon Appstore will no longer be available in the Microsoft Store after March 5, 2025. #536
Replies: 60 comments 27 replies
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Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android™️ (WSA). As a result, the Amazon Appstore on Windows and all applications and games dependent on WSA will no longer be supported beginning March 5, 2025. |
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Typical MS. |
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This is very bad. |
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It would be solved by making it open source. Presumably it integrates quite closely with the windows kernel which they wouldn't want others to have but open sourcing it is a sure fire way to ensure its longevity |
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Such a disappointed. |
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feels bad. |
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Seems Microsoft were bitten by Google 💀 |
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any plan for WSA anternative ?? |
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I’m sorry but it was doomed to fail when there are virtually no apps in the Amazon Appstore. I haven’t seen any improvement made to the store ever since WSA launched. Almost everyone resorted to sideloading. |
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Pro tip to @microsoft: Amazon has failed with utilizing Android for a decade. Does anyone even remember that store exists? I've always used Google Play & Magisk etc since it first launched! |
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do you plan to remake it? |
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i don't think they have "plane" to remake wsl, no way they can get license from google... |
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Maybe open source it, since its discontinued now. |
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How very disappointing of Microsoft management to make this choice. At least open source it so that others can continue the project. |
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Wrong decision to use the bad Amazon Appstore...open it for the Play Store, revive it and it will be great. Switched from iPad to Win 11 tablet because of WSA!!!! Or open it for the community! Very bad decision for a feature running well (with Play Store hack...) |
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So Microsoft made a product, tied it to a horrible third party app store, refused to advertise it anywhere, and gave up two years later. What exactly was their strategy here? |
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They are so obsessed with Copilot that they don't give any care about other features in windows or whatever they make |
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Nobody is using Copilot, I know that since I don't. I do use ChatGPT and local LLM and Codeium in VSCode. But I really never used Copilot more than few times. Microsoft spent ( will lose, probably ) a $10 billion on a failing project that they can't monetize or generate ad revenue from consumers. They could have done a lot better with WSA if they ( Microsoft and Google ) swallowed their pride, have some under table agreement and shared revenue by adding the Play Store. Instead of competing with Google Play for PC ( which is still Beta, probably will go defunct soon too, it never took off after 2 years). |
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The public facing side of Co pilot is not what is ever going to make money, it's the gigantic developer and back end. Even if you do some development, if you don't know anyone that has ideas or pays for massive amounts of chat GPT/copilot etc or at least planning for it, then you don't know the people that are the money makers, the public facing side is not what actually matters except keeping it in the public's mind for Enterprise customers |
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Disappointed but not surprised |
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I'm disappointed. Open the source code |
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привет дисапоинтед)))) |
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This is only a kernel. Shortly, without complete open-source repo, it will be difficult for community developers to get WSA up and running again anytime soon. This is a huge setback for Windows 11 users and Microsoft's cross-platform development. |
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It turns out the reason they are abandoning WSA is that nobody used Amazon Store, no ad revenue and thus not financially viable to pay for the employees who maintain WSA, since Microsoft was paying the employees from the ad revenue of the Amazon Store, cheap.. |
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Do you have a source to back this up? It would be immensely valuable to have some concrete evidence that this is the case. Makes arguing that they need to continue maintaining it as a Developer tool all the easier |
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An employee on twitter said so. Frankly, its stupid. You can't just announce a feature and take it away. Its not like Windows is free unlike every other OS on earth. So it literally makes no sense. |
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It is really tragic that Microsoft is not insisting harder for continuing working on WSA, with other means to finance it. It is not like if Microsoft is not the the second tech company in the world... |
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This is really sad |
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I like this app too much. I am planning to remake this software and add android 14 support |
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how you want remake it? |
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searching some more info about the android intergration and then try to make it in c# or c++ but its a hard job but yeah it will be eassier when the source is availble |
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its not open source yet ! |
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Yeah I know but i cam try to remake it |
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It's still mind blowing that Microsoft could consider dropping support for WSA. Amazon Store is one thing but WSA itself is the best thing that happened to Windows since mice. Being able to run apps developed for one of the most widely used app framework on Windows is a key advantage in the world of desktop OS today. |
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i hate microsoft, i just want simple emulator ;v |
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it was the main highlight of your initial Windows 11 release videos and you're killing it now? smh |
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So that was funny, next time please do that on April the 1st Microsoft. When are you upgrading to Android 14? |
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What kind of BS decision is that? Now that the DMA forces Google and Apple to let 3rd party markets, you kill the project? What the hell is that. Just make your own store and run it on Android and iOS! Now neither Google nor Apple can stop you from that, since the DMA (Digital Market Act) is effective! And have it preinstalled on windows, then you can pick the Windows and Android Audience, rather than (the previous attempts) of having developers migrate to porting Apps to Windows Mobile/Windows |
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I'll let you know from a prior experience I became aware of, that.. Adding insult to injury, the moderators of many Amazon repositories are extremely sensitive to criticism. Take what you will from that. But I completely agree and will likely be infuriated by the decision for many years. |
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WSA is Microsoft. Its just that I don't get it. DMA has been settled in stone for a while and effective for almost a year (May 2nd , 2023) which forces all platforms to open, read allow 3rd party stores. They could have made one or simply ported the windows store (android can run .NET applications) and use that as a 3rd party store and Google can't do anything against it but allow it due to the DMA (Digital Market Act). No more needing devs to port. give them attractive conditions (i.e. very low cut for the first 2 years they host their apps there) etc. to get people migrate to the new store, then they can offer their apps in both stores and have access to Android AND Windows User base |
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Agree, they should run their own store if the Amazon one was the issue. Though I'm guessing that's even more investments. Hell MS is already struggling to run their own app store and I doubt it is much profitable. The fact is the whole WSA project must have been really expensive as it is. Some genius at MS added up the numbers and decided to stop the bleeding and shut it down. |
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Honestly, I doubt. If EF Core and .NET Core any measure, there are at best 6-7 employees dedicated at it, probably less seeing how slow the rate of updates was in the past. i.e. the EF Core was running with 5 or 6 core members most of the time and is now at like 4? They do great job for the amount of developers that are put in there, but people shouldn't overestimate and think that just because Microsoft has 221k employees world-wide, every project is insanely expensive or has 100 of developers involved in it. That's what? 1 million per year? or 2? Peanuts for a company making billions in profits. More likely some manager saw, that there can be a few bucks saved and cut it. Same as happens in Automobile industry: Someone in the sales department see they can save 3 cents, multiply that with the parts built per year and see a 5 digit figure and thing: "Hey let's get that other supplier for this part, we can save 3 cents and xxxxx.yy per year on it. I am surely to get an promotion". By the time the part may have higher fail rate or lower quality and causes 7-digit damage in logistics department, because of higher return rate, dismantling already finished products or doing product recall campaign. End of the story: Company overall most more money, but the one person could put in a sticker on their wall for "saving 5-digit amount of money" while the other department gets blamed for the recalls. That's how real-world business works. |
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Like others here, I am very disappointed in this decision. WSA was an important feature in Windows for me. Running Android apps on the reliable, stable, and high-performance WSA built into Windows, rather than third-party emulators, is my daily routine. Could you please reconsider your decision or release it as open source? It's definitely an important feature. |
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One of the dumbest decisions Microsoft has ever made. They could've captured many who like to enjoy Android apps and the Android framework, because those users/players would've utilized those programms along with their regular Windows software. They could've had a huge market here by continuing WSA, and just instead get rid of this ridiculous Amazon App Store that nobody on this planet used. And they needn't even be surprised: Installing the Amazon App Store and WSA isn't as straight forward as it should be. You see, in many regions and countries around the world, you cannot even install the Amazon App Store and WSA without sideloading it to begin with, due to pointless regionlocks. So why are they all of a sudden shocked that they didn't manage to "capitalize" on that feature to begin with? Also, not every single thing has to be making profit, some things are for the long term, and Microsoft could've played the long-term gain with WSA, simply because developers for Android will utilize Windows even more than before, and because they could've always added what I am about to say now: Microsoft: Get rid of the Amazon App Store, keep developing & maintaining WSA, get Google to use it as a base for making "Google Play Games for PC" better and have better hardware compatibility, make some under-the-table deal with Google to let people download the Google Play Store directly from the Microsoft Store, and ask for a mere 5% revenue cut and BOOM, you got all you wanted. How can it be so difficult? Swallow your pride jfc... |
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If Google Play doesn't want to cooperate, just make it easy to install APKs directly (now it's kinda a hack) and maybe allow pulling them straight from an Android device (like |
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This is disappointing and a shame to see that Microsoft's response to whole situation is just to call off an entire project and not even give back to the community by making it open-source, even partially. To my knowledge, WSA was also used as a marketting material to advertise Windows 11 so I suppose it was all a marketting ploy just to get users in and then slowly take away the features... Why throw away all the hard work? |
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Windows Subsystem for Android™ and the Amazon Appstore will no longer be available in the Microsoft Store after March 5, 2025. Learn more.
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