Windows president Steven Sinofsky appears to have finally confirmed rumours that the next version of the Microsoft operating system will feature an app store similar to Apple's Mac App Store for OS X-based applications.

In a blog post to introduce the Windows 8 engineering and development team, Sinofsky listed the teams which will contribute to the project, including apparently new entities such as 'App Store', 'Hyper-V' and 'XAML' groups.

The move has been generally well received in the comments section of the blog, with several Microsoft enthusiasts giving it the thumbs up.

Niall wrote: "Yay, confirmation of an app store, will be nice for bringing everything together in 1 place."

Another, Sylvan, argued that Microsoft should give developers and consumers a way of communicating directly with one another to improve the apps.

"In fact it's one feature i think could make Windows App Store different and much better than the other app stores," he said.

Full story: V3.co.uk