I'm almost definitively sure it is related to some misguided KPIs or having someone's bonus tied to the metric "number of published apps". At one point, MS was offering $100 or $200 per app, up to 10 or 20 apps. No one would believe a single dev is likely to publish 20 quality apps. Instead they really wanted shovelware. There are thousands of apps that are literally just wrappers around a web page or YouTube channel.