Some of this is to be expected. Many of these services have lived on islands (Xbox stuff) and/or simply are not ready for the SaS/mobile world, while the "brand" has never been good. With Windows 8 they have an opportunity (necessity?) to consolidate everything into a more cohesive, consumer and mobile friendly set of services and apps. The end result will only be somewhat recognizable as a progression of Live etc. So dropping a "brand" that's never been strong at this point is a smart move.
What concerns me in this article, though, is what's missing here. In particular, for me, there's no mention of Windows Live Writer. It will be a very sad day if this application dies due to this change.
