Windows Forms is basically this, a better MFC version, and even if it was only for faster startup times, NGEN has been there since day 1.
The biggest issue has been WinDev, that contrary to Google's culture in ChromeOS and Android, they will kill any attempt to touch their precious COM and C++ tools, thus the way the Longhorn project went down, only to see its ideas redone in COM, and WinRT coming to existence.
WinRT is one of the biggest fail of Microsoft in the last decades. Instead of pushing for a multiplatform .NET implementation with a portable UI (Silverlight OOB was just that), or even running on most Windows versions, we got framework over framework (WinRT, UWP, WinUI) that are only compatible with the last version of Windows and don't bring value over WPF.
Speaking as someone that bought into it, WinRT was kind of the .NET idea before they went with a Java clone (Ext-VOS), they didn't fail only on features, they failed on how it was managed.
From the forced rewrites across Windows 8, 8.1 and 10, as the platform was maturing, the deprecation of C++/CX, replaced by less capable C++/WinRT (now in maintainance, while they are having fun in Rust/WinRT), deprecation of .NET Native without parity in Native AOT, no designer, and plenty of other broken stuff.
It was for this that WinDev kind of sabotaged Longhorn efforts, thanks very much.
Meanwhile Google shows what happens when everyone pushes into the same direction, even if it takes some growing pains (with lots of cash) to get there.
The biggest issue has been WinDev, that contrary to Google's culture in ChromeOS and Android, they will kill any attempt to touch their precious COM and C++ tools, thus the way the Longhorn project went down, only to see its ideas redone in COM, and WinRT coming to existence.