VS Code is part of the strategy to get .NET Core distributed and to support the web layers built on top of that which mostly now use open source technology (from npm and bower through to grunt, typescript and angular)
Na, I think the real plan starting to unfold. This week we get the new welcome screen, next will be the "deploy to Azure" and "how to make a Windows Store App" sidebar links.
(not that I'll stop using it, I'm sure someone will fork if gets too obnoxious)