Microsoft Dropping "Live" Branding With Windows Phone 8 Launch

It's still kind of a confusing mess at this point, but word is that Microsoft is dropping its "Live" branding on all its services. It was discovered through an update that must have released earlier than intended, that the Xbox Live Extras app in the Windows Phone Store was getting rid of the "Live" in its name and would be called just "Xbox Extras" instead.

Today, it seems that the app is nowhere to be found in the Windows Phone Store, which has us believing that the update was released pre-maturely and then later pulled from the store. Most likely, it was probably an update to coincide with Microsoft's upcoming Windows Phone 8 launch event on October 29, which could mean we could see a branding change come later this month.

However, Xbox Extras wasn't the only app that seemed to be experiencing update issues recently. The Adobe Reader 10.1 app also was experiencing some issues in the Windows Phone Store, after an "update" to the app was reverting some users back to version 9.0, which meant they would lose the 10.1 version until Microsoft fixed the issue.

Even if it does look like the Windows Phone Store is experiencing problems, this makes us wonder if the company is truly dropping it's "Live" branding for all of its services. This would mean that Xbox Live would no longer be called Xbox Live, but rather just "Xbox" or some other moniker that they might come up with. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with later this month.

[via WPCentral]