Install Office 2016 OEM without Live account

Good analysis, Brian.  I think maybe what has happened is that application developers have found that customers don't rush to buy their periodic new versions, as users see ever smaller incremental improvements and new features.  As a long time user of Adobe Photoshop, I can attest to that.  $650 was the initial purchase price, with Upgrade versions about every 18-24 months for $200, and those new versions' "features becoming increasingly more hype than substance.  Many serious users skipped every other upgrade, and some skipped two out of three, before they deemed a new version worthwhile.  Adobe attempted to dissuade that with upgrades being limited to users of the last 2 editions, and when that didn't bump upgrade sales, they went to the rental (aka subscription) model. 

When Adobe announced Photoshop CC would be $10 a month, the was a run on the current retail version, Photoshop CS6 by users of CS4 and CS5.  As a customer, I ask myself, if Photoshop had mostly cosmetic or insignificant improvements in their upgrade versions, what is Adobe's motivation to make major improvements now?  They've turned product sales into an Annuity for Adobe.  You pay $10 a month for the rest of your life to Adobe, whether they make material improvements or not, if you want to continue using the product.  I'm sure Microsoft execs watched the results of Adobe's move.  After two and a half years, it's still going.  Adobe support is as poor as ever, with ESL personnel in Asia.  Customer service is awful.  Yet my wife allows Adobe to charge our credit card $10 a month plus tax each and every month.  I still use Photoshop CS6, the last version they sold (although recent Windows 10 updates have started crashing that program, so I've had to go back to W10 build 1511 and turn off auto updates.)

Sorry for the long comment.  Bottom line is that just using a computer is getting more complicated and more expensive.  As in so many other industries, big tech corporations have excessive power and support the government establishment to be sure they keep that power.  The corporation-government cabal has built barriers to new entry so as to keep the status quo and their joint power.  I just completed a Microsoft survey with all truthful answers.  I know what will come of that...I'll not be asked to fill out a survey again.  LibreOffice looks better every day.  So does Linux.

OP here.  At one point, giving MS the benefit of the doubt, I thought I could see this all as an honest attempt at anti-piracy measures. But we now have 24 pages of responses, and Microsoft's only response was a lame entry up on page 1 telling me to post the question to the Office 364 forum instead. So I am really beginning to think this is intentional and looks like this:

1. Retail Office 2016 Home & Business is somewhere around $230 last time I checked.
2. VLS is about $340.
3. 365 runs between $96 (with online versionf only and hosted Exchange) and $144 (with Outlook, assuming POP or your own Exchange server) annually. So, at least by year 3, 365 has become more expensive than retail.

So without eliminating #1 outright, MS can leave the illusion of choice while virtually forcing small businesses to choose #2 or #3 by simply making #1, the most affordable and rational for those small businesses, virtually impossible to manage. But many small businesses simply do not want to rent their Office software or risk having it time out, so they prefer to purchase up front, eliminating #3. With #1 eliminated by virtue of complexity in managing the licenses and #3 by virtue of the timeout, this leaves #2 as the only reasonable choice for many businesses--and, mysteriously enough, turns out to be the most lucrative for MS.

And all of this can be done without eliminating the one-off home office user whose life is not particularly complicated by a single copy of the retail version. Really, it could be a brilliant, if underhanded, strategy to force small businesses to gravitate toward the more expensive VLS version. Except that, for many of us, it makes LibreOffice with Thunderbird look more attractive than any of the three options above.

Sam, where do you see "Belongs to ......."?  I'd like to look further into that.  Also, you say MS didn't think this out well?  Can you think of any other examples of unfinished products and ideas coming out of MS and leaving customers as unwitting beta testers?  Windows 10 maybe?

This has been irritating to my employer. We pay so much for our employees to have office now we essentially have to give it away with every computer. I have tried to get them to volume license but it is more expensive than retail licensing.  I always thought if you bought in volume you get more of a discount, like MacDonald's. This is the same reason we are now using Google apps. Microsoft is to difficult to deal with.

This activation process is the most **** up thing i have experienced with MS products. So i went through the nightmare of creating new accounts for the keys. But now i cant add two Office 2016 licenses to an existing account. this is ridiculous. Please Microsoft start fixing this!