Some Story Remix content will be annoyingly behind Office 365 Subscription Paywall

Story Remix, probably the coolest app that will become available with Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, will have some of its features & content locked behind the Office 365 Subscription Pay Wall. This will include Themes, music, effects and few other things. Sounds like Microsoft will make this app one of the core feature of Office 365, and will be used by Microsoft to boost Office 365 sales, and monetize it.

This is annoying. IMO, this could have been done in another way as well. Microsoft could have asked for a premium for those features, and content or just put them on the Store, and let people buy it. This way people who don’t really need Office 365 still could buy it if they needed it, especially the non-business users. This is how most of the apps offer through in-app purchases.

Office 365 is a totally unrelated product, and Story Remix is more of a consumer product than anything else. It’s like asking consumers to pay something every year if you want to use those premium features of Story Remix. Pretty sure that nobody is going to buy it, and instead download tons of freeware that’s available competing with this. Younger generation & creative people are one of the major focus here, and it will be tough to sell them Office 365 on the first hand. Good luck with that!

This was Spotted by Laurent Giret @OnMSFT as a new update to the Photos App available for Skip Ahead Insiders.