Logitech is killing off the Blue mic brand, will sell Yeti and Astro under Logitech G

Logitech bought gaming headset maker Astro for $85 million in 2017, and mic maker Blue Microphones for $177 million a year later. Now, it’s merging the two into the Logitech G brand for gamers and streamers—but while Astro will largely continue, the Blue brand is being phased out.

“Will the Blue Microphones brand disappear?” read a question in Logitech Brand Merger FAQ. “We will keep the Yeti brand and convert it to Logitech G. The name Blue will be used to describe our technologies,” the response began.

Meanwhile, the Astro brand “will continue to exist as a line of premium console audio products under the Logitech G brand,” the company said, adding that Logitech actually plans to launch a new product. New Astro in the near future.

“We are very excited about Astro as a Logitech G product line,” Logitech added later.

You can already see the transition happening on Logitech’s website, which still sells Yeti microphones and even Snowball microphones that only come with “with Blue VO!CE” but no longer links to the website or product page. Blue’s exclusive product as well. (The Wayback Machine shows me this isn’t a completely new change — Logitech has been adding a “Yeti” “with Blue VO!CE” microphone to its website for months.) Still, Astrogaming.com still exists. .

Logitech’s competitors often don’t dismiss acquired brands with a known legacy. Corsair, which has gathered enough pieces to become a billion dollar company by 2020, still sells controllers under the name Scuf Gaming (bought in 2019), PCs under the name Origin PC (also 2019) and streaming device under the name Elgato (2018).

HP sells the headset under the HyperX name, even though it bought that company two years ago. (HP once bought a small gaming PC company called Voodoo, only to briefly sell systems that “had Voodoo’s DNA” before giving up on gamers for a while.) THX didn’t turn around. lost since its acquisition by Razer — it disappeared with Nextbit after promising it would remain an independent company, but Nextbit only had one phone.

Logitech itself didn’t kill Ultimate Ears, for that matter, the brand of Bluetooth headphones and speakers they bought for $34 million in 2008. It’s still the UE Boom, not the Logitech Boom. The Logitech Saitek flying stick brand still has its own branding, even if Logitech sells the Logitech G X56 HOTAS on its website. Jaybird too, bought it in 2016. Maybe it’s just a matter of time.

It’s not clear why Logitech has minimized its influencer brands Astro and Blue, which define the premium gaming headset and streamer microphone categories respectively, but I wonder if there is Logitech simply decided that they had to choose between Blue and Yeti — and Yeti was the name that rang out.

However, Logitech simply presents it as a fusion game: you’ll be able to control all of your previous Blue, Astro and Logitech Creator products in the Logitech G suite once everything’s done. . Me, I do whatever I can to get rid of the peripheral manufacturers’ software: I can’t wait until Windows lets me control the RGB lighting of my Logitech mouse later this year.