One of the things that will make or break the success of Windows Phone 7 is Microsoft’s App Marketplace.  Part of that success will be due to the developers who create really cool stuff and want to give it away for free.

Up until today, developers have been restricted to just submitting only five free apps without having to pay any fees. Now however, Microsoft has announced that they have increased that limit up to 100 apps before having to pay the $20 submission fee per app.

As Daniel Rubino at WPCentral points out, this submission fee and the low number of free submissions was done to try and keep the Marketplace from being littered with junk apps.

The goal was originally meant to prevent developers from pumping out a ton of free, but low quality apps to the Marketplace i.e. clone apps with slightly varying titles, etc. So the intention was good, but the problem was this: free, ad supported apps ended up bringing in more revenue for developers than some paid versions. Take someone like game-developer Elbert Perez (Impossible Shoota, others) who made all six (and counting) of his games for free/ad supported–he’d have to pay $20 for each submission, including if it failed the resubmission.

After listening to the developer feedback on this, Microsoft obviously reconsidered the limit and moved it upward.

Way to go, Microsoft.

[Cross-posted at Winextra]