I will list important things one should know if they are planning to develop applications/games for Windows Phone 7 platform.
- You need a developer account to upload any application/game which costs 99$ per year.
- You can submit unlimited number of paid applications.
- You can only submit 5 free applications using one developer account. Each additional free application will cost 19.99$ to developer. Having said that, there is a catch.
- When they say 5 free application submission, they mean that you can make 5 submissions to Microsoft for any applications. If your application is rejected by Microsoft MarketPlace team, you lose your one free submission. So, say X submits XYZ application, which is rejected due to problem a. He now has 4 free submissions. He fixes the issue a and then submits again, it gets rejected again due to b problem. He now has 3 free submissions. If he fixes problem b and then submits again, if this time it gets accepted, X will be left with only 2 submissions now. So, you should make sure you test the application thoroughly. Because after 5 free submissions, each submission try is going to cost you 20$ (and because it’s a free app, you are not going to get direct revenue from app sale!)
- You can use the same developer account to upload 10 XBOX games to XBOX 360 marketplace.
- Microsoft will take 30% of total earning; developer gets 70%.
- You will receive your payment only after your sell reaches 200$.
- Once you get the developer account, you can “developer unlock” your windows phone device. (Maximum you can unlock 3 devices where you can deploy applications without going through marketplace).
- If you have student partner account, you can keep maximum of 3 applications on the device which hasn’t come from marketplace.
- If you have paid account (which I mentioned above 99$/per year) you can keep maximum of 10 applications on the device which hasn’t come from Marketplace. So, in case if you have to add 11th application on the developer unlocked phone, you will need to remove one of first 10 apps from phone, otherwise you will not be able to transfer 11th app!
- Here are the guidelines and requirements that one should go through before attempting a submission to Marketplace. If you miss any of the points mentioned in the guide, your application may be rejected.
I will update this blog post as I come across more facts.