That is (was?) the problem, it reads like a dozen different teams were involved in that whole process and they all talked past each other, or there was no unified vision, or no process manager involved. But keeping oversight and ensuring a single view of a whole set of products like that is difficult. Of course, Microsoft didn't make it easy for themselves either, at the time having Windows Update via a website and no "app store" equivalent.

That said, the current state isn't that much better; they do have an app store at the moment, but all the alternatives are still there as well. Developer tools you install via nuget or chocolatey or whatever, games via Steam, Epic, or each individual developer's launcher, loads of stuff you just get via a download off a website, etc.