Then again, we know what a Microsoft storefront looks like. Two of them actually, and they’re both pretty bad. On the Xbox, sales are rare, the interface is awful and cluttered with non-gaming ads, and oh yeah, people still need to pay out the nose every month for Xbox Live Gold if they want multiplayer. Microsoft also hasn’t completely overcome the wave of negative sentiment that culminated in the “Microsoft hates indies” catchphrase a few years back. It’s getting better, but the Xbox still isn’t a prime destination for indie developers the way it was from 2008 to 2012 or so.

The Microsoft Store in Windows 10 is even worse. Microsoft has failed to convince pretty much anyone to care about the built-in Store, which has been part of the operating system since Windows 8 launched in 2012.

Microsoft seemingly has no idea how to entice the average PC gamer, as evidenced by the Microsoft Store's forced (and subpar) integration with Xbox Live, the fact the store “organizes” all your games into one looooong and entirely unsorted list (with your DLC purchases listed separately and individually in the "Apps" section for some reason), the awkward controller-friendly interface, and so on.

Not to mention the nightmare that is UWP, the “Universal Windows Platform” format Microsoft touts as a successor to traditional Win32 desktop software. UWP games have had a laundry list of problems though—no support for common streaming utilities, no support for frame rate counter overlays like FRAPS, no support for multiple video cards, no modding or backup abilities, and more. Some of these problems have been somewhat worked around at this point, but the troubled run-up certainly hasn’t instilled confidence Microsoft understands the PC market.