How Microsoft is killing off the Zune and Windows Live brands in Windows 8
Microsoft appears to be killing off two of its key user-facing brands with the upcoming Consumer Preview release of Windows 8. Windows Live applications have been rolled into preinstalled apps that work as the core …
Context & Ripple Effects
The brand teardown has been building for months: Microsoft confirmed in October 2011 that it would stop producing Zune players, after puzzling observers in August by shipping new Zune HD apps with no stated purpose. The Windows 8 Consumer Preview completes the job on the software side, stripping the Zune name from the OS entirely.
Windows Live goes the same way — its applications are rolled into preinstalled core apps, while SkyDrive absorbs Windows Live Mesh, dropping the direct PC-to-PC sync Mesh offered. The story traveled widely, picked up by CNET, TechCrunch, Gizmodo, BGR and four other outlets on the same day, reflecting how many long-lived Microsoft consumer brands were being retired at once.
First-order effects
- Existing Zune and Windows Live users lose their branded applications in the Consumer Preview: Live Mail, Messenger and companion apps become unnamed preinstalled Windows 8 apps, and Zune's identity disappears from the media experience.
- Windows Live Mesh users who relied on direct PC-to-PC synchronization lose that capability as the feature set folds into SkyDrive, which does not carry it forward.
Second-order effects
- With Zune and Windows Live retired from the OS, Microsoft's remaining consumer umbrella for music, video and communications on Windows 8 is the Xbox brand — every retired sub-brand funnels users toward a single consolidated identity.
- Third-party developers and accessory makers tied to Zune or Windows Live branding face a forced repositioning around Windows 8's built-in apps or Xbox-branded services ahead of the OS launch.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Microsoft treats each Windows generation as an occasion to retire legacy consumer brands rather than maintain them, concentrating brand equity in fewer names — Windows plus Xbox — at the cost of stranding loyal sub-brand audiences.
- Bundling formerly separate paid/named services as anonymous preinstalled OS features shifts the competitive frame from standalone product brands to whatever ships inside Windows, pressuring rivals whose media and messaging products still stand alone.
The trend: Microsoft is consolidating its scattered consumer sub-brands into a two-name structure — Windows and Xbox — using each major OS release to retire the brands that came before.