Can I upgrade my Windows Phone 7 apps to WP8 and have both in the Store?

Question

I have some apps in the Windows Phone Store that support Windows Phone 7. I'd like to upgrade them to support windows Phone 8, but will that leave users with WP7 unable to buy/reinstall the app?

Answer 1

The DevCenter allows you to push two of your versions of your app: one for the WP8 users, and one for the legacy WP7 users. That way, your WP7 users can keep on using the app.

Answer 2

DevCenter supports multiple XAPs for the same app. So apps can have one XAP for WP7 and one or more XAPs for WP8. I've explained this issue fully here @ How do I get my Windows Phone 7 app to show up in the Windows Phone 8 marketplace?

Here's a print screen demoing the DevCenter support for submitting multiple XAPs for the same app on different platform versions and different resolutions:

Answer 3

You should either create "last release" for WP7 and update your solution to WP8, submit version for WP8 and keep updating only this one, or create second WP8 project, add links to all files from the original solution and maintain WP7.5 and WP8 version at the same time.
Windows Phone Store allows you to submit one version for WP7.5 and one for WP8, so you can keep updating both versions.

Answer 4

In fact I have an app that is available as v1.3 for WP7, v1.5 for WP7.1 (Mango) and v1.6 for WP8. This is not to say I couldn't have the same version for all the platforms, but I've been "mean" and requiring the latest OS version for the latest version of my app.