As a hobbist, I quite like UWP.
UWP + SharpDX + Win2D is all the best bits (for me) of XNA. (Hardly surprising on the Win2D front, Shawn Hargreaves from the XNA team had a hand in it I believe).
I'm knocking up some mobile apps in advance of any potential Surface phone appearing in the next year or so, talk about a "blue ocean"!
It's actually made me consider an XB1 just so I can port some of them to it.
*goes back to abusing CanvasSpriteBatch*
BTW, UWP is no longer limited to Windows Store distribution.