Wow shocking. Just stumbled upon this announcement on the homepage of microsoft.com/expression. Microsoft is discontinuing the Expression suite and consolidating it to Visual Studio, hence the latest reincarnation of Blend is known as Blend for Visual Studio 2012 as opposed to Expression Blend like before.

It doesn't come too much as a surprise since I know no designer who used the Expression Web or Design tools. Blend and Encoder obviously have ( or had?) their place.

Blend for Visual Studio 2012 will remain as a separate product (which is a good thing!!). However Microsoft is phasing out all the other Expression products.