Tim Cook will take some of the biggest industries by storm when he takes the centre-stage to announce its anticipated streaming service at the Apple Special Event on Monday, March 25. While the spotlight will be on the ‘Netflix killer’ service, Apple is also poised to announce Apple News subscription, as well as its own gaming (or game streaming) platform to up the ante against Google that recently launched Stadia as its first full-scale venture into the gaming industry. The Cupertino-headquartered giant is also highly likely to launch a co-branded credit card in partnership with Goldman Sachs. Read | Apple Special Event today will send shivers up Netflix’s spine: What Indian iPhone users should know The Apple News subscription is speculated to comprise exclusive content from major publishers, such as The New York Times. The Apple device owners would be able to subscribe to the service and get their hands on premium material much before everybody else. With the new magazine subscriptions, the Apple News app, which was revamped last year, is expected to take on Google News that already offers subscriptions from various media houses across many nations.
Other publishers that have been reported to get onboard with Apple are The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Although none of them has readily confirmed their alliance with Apple for its magazine subscription service, a WSJ report suggested that publishers are hesitating to join Apple because of the latter’s revenue distribution model – Apple would take 50 per cent of the total revenue generated by the service.
Coming to the gaming service, Apple may extend its software blanket to cover the industry that is being targeted by many companies now. After many years of investment into its in-house gaming service, Google last week introduced Stadia at the Gaming Developers Conference (GDC). While Apple may not be heavily interested in spinning off a separate gaming platform, it could double the efforts for gaming features available within the App Store. As per a Bloomberg report, Apple could introduce a monthly subscription for the iOS users so that they can access games from third-party developers without any in-app fee.
Anyhow, Apple’s gaming subscription is unlikely to be what Google Stadia is claimed to offer. Stadia is a gaming service that relies heavily on the cloud infrastructure, thereby, cutting the need for any hardware.
Besides, Apple could, for the first time, venture into offering personal banking cards in association with Goldman Sachs. In fact, an official from Goldman Sachs is expected to join Tim Cook on the stage to announce the rumoured credit card at the Apple Special Event on Monday. The co-branded credit card is said to offer discounts, credits, and purchase rewards to the customers. The credit card is expected to be a part of Apple Pay service.
The Apple Special Event kicks off at 10.30 pm IST, March 25. We’ll be covering the event live, so stay tuned for updates.

Source: financialexpress.com