Microsoft have been making changes here and there to Xbox Live of late, including major ones like free-to-play games finally no longer requiring Xbox Live Gold subscriptions to be played offline, and it seems that more changes – though related to the Xbox Live branding this time – might be coming as well.
It seems the Xbox dashboard no longer has any mention of Xbox Live, and instead only refers to it in the UI as “Xbox network”, suggesting that Microsoft might be preparing to drop the long-standing “Live” branding entirely in favour of something more general and wide-ranging. Given their platform-agnostic and services-driven approach, that would definitely fit with their strategy.
Of course, this is yet to be acknowledged by Microsoft in an official statement, so it’s probably best to wait for word from the horse’s mouth for now. Meanwhile, some reports have suggested that Xbox Live Gold might still be done away with in the near future (despite Microsoft saying that it isn’t going away any time soon). Read more on that through here.