Maybe because nobody needs it. People are used to buying Windows software from elsewhere. I am in this category as well. When I need software I look by searching I have no desire to ever visit those stores.
It can be really nice to have an official way to download and install software in one click. For a few years after the windows store was released, I used to look there first for software but I was always disappointed. They never managed to make it good enough that anything I wanted would be published there.
>"It can be really nice to have an official way..."
Windows store started with only being able to serve UWP applications that were really constrained in what they could do. I just laughed when my competitors went that way as they'd lost some rather important features.
As a person I just hate an "official ways" as in my opinion they are detrimental to customers but to each their own.
It could be really awesome. Imagine if you could take a plain APPX package [1] and publish it on your website. That could be set up to integrate with the whole store platform so users could optionally get the benefit of auto-updates and optionally log in and make in app purchases.
There's so much low hanging fruit when it comes to improving the user experience on Windows that I can't even understand what Microsoft is trying to do.
Maybe because nobody needs it. People are used to buying Windows software from elsewhere. I am in this category as well. When I need software I look by searching I have no desire to ever visit those stores.