Apple held its annual special event on Tuesday, detailing its new line of mobile products, but also giving us some more information about how when its new subscription services would launch and how much they would cost.
Apple TV+ will launch on November 1, with original shows See, starring Jason Momoa, The Morning Show, starring Steve Carrell and Jennifer Aniston, and For All Mankind debuting at launch.
Apple TV+ will come with a seven-day free trial and cost $4.99 a month, for up to six members of your family.
Apple’s other major subscription service will launch much earlier. Apple Arcade comes out next Friday, September 19, and goes hard with what it’s offering: 100 “Console”-exclusive games will be available at or around launch; none of the games will have microtransactions; games will be available offline with reportedly only an intermittent internet connection required to ensure you still have a subscription; cross-play and cross-save on Apple TV, iOS, iPad OS, and macOS; and family sharing with up to six family members. The starting price is, yet again, $4.99 a month, and a full one-month free trial leading up to that.
Here’s what I’m excited about: I don’t have to update my current array of Apple products to take advantage of this, and on top of that, I can bring in my existing hardware – my Xbox One controller – to play games more comfortably. There’s going to be a frankly overwhelming number of games to play at launch, even if it’s not quite 100 games, and for $5 a month I’m not exactly sweating about cost. I’m interested to see how these games will be optimized going from mobile to Mac, but not really worried; this seems like a pretty sure thing on Apple’s part. I guess we’ll see in a week!
iOS 13 comes out on September 19. iPad OS comes out on the 30th, and macOS Catalina currently has no release date yet.
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