Centennial Office Test a Windows 10 app is available on the Windows Store. It doesn’t do much now but foretells something interesting in the Office world.
The link for more information on the publisher ‘Project Centennial’ is totally blank but its actually Microsoft itself. ‘Project Centennial’ is makes ‘bridges’ so that existing programs – like Windows 32-bit desktop programs can run as Windows 10 apps.
At some stage, Microsoft might release Office for Windows as a set of Windows 10 apps.
Why? To get more developers to sell via the Windows Store. Microsoft has found it hard to get developers to make Windows 10 apps and sell them through their Store. The cost and difficulty of conversion could be drastically reduced if Project Centennial works as promised – a big if.
Mind you, there’s still the small matter of 30% Microsoft takes on sales through their Store. That’s hard for Windows developers to take after decades of selling direct to customers.
It’s a very large download by Windows app standards – 961MB. By comparison, the Microsoft Word Mobile app is only 120MB.
At the moment, the app can be downloaded and installed but does nothing.
