It’s the eve of the Apple Event, 24th March 2019. Apple have cleared the decks for the big day by announcing updates to iPad, iMac and AirPods on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday the previous week.

It seems I’m the only person that has no inside info as every podcast I listen to, including ATP, Stacktrace, Connected, Upgrade, Download, etc, seems to be expecting two things I do not see. It’s obvious that some kind of video streaming service is coming. It’s Show Time after all. But people who I think have a bit of an inside track also think that Apple will be offering a bundle of media services like Music, News, TV, Movies and possibly a games subscription service. Here are my 3 top reasons that Apple will not announce a media content bundle on the 25th March 2019:

1. Apple Don’t Bundle

How is that Logic/Final Cut/Filemaker bundle? Remember when Apple offered an iMac, MacBook Pro, iPad, and iPhone at a great bundle price? Nor do I.

Apple just do not tend to bundle things up. In fact, they like to do the opposite. Just add some RAM onto any base spec Mac to see this in action. Apple spec out for a headline price to advertise and have big margins on add-ons.

2. Who is Driving Sales?

The Music execs will claim it is the great music, and the TV execs will claim it is the awesome shows. There is no way that a TV exec is going to allow a music label to have some of their cut. It just does not happen that way. A long time ago, I made a music game for Sony Computer Entertainment and two of the only content owners we could not license anything from were Sony Pictures and Sony’s music publishing labels. We were working for the same company and we could not get a deal. I will eat my hat if Apple have somehow got Music and TV to share. Apple could say that they’ll pay dividends based on listens or views. I would not go there if I were a content company. Content is King – but nobody knows which content until it’s too late. You cannot plan a business based on a content exposure model unless the content is crappy and cheap to produce and you are not making it. See all social media. Apple is reportedly spending significant sums on new shows so they are also competing for eyeballs. Would you do an eyeball-based deal knowing this and knowing how much Apple can spend on content? Nor would I.

3. News is Worthless

Controversial opinion maybe but the News app proves out that there is no value in the content there to bundle. The big news players have already set up paywalls or membership schemes. What’s left is the scraps. Also, I’m fed up of being fed the same story derived from the same press release by 10 different outlets as if they are unique stories. The bundling in News works against making it worth keeping on my device, frankly.

That’s the media bundle debunked. Now for the game subscription service…

I just do not get who benefits from this. The one possibility is that premium games that would not otherwise be made are now possible. But we have a similar problem in dividing the spoils. Who is driving the sales? A must-have experience that is an hour-long might be bringing more customers in than a 60 hour epic. Why should the hour-long game take less and not more? Who decides this? Another version is that Apple just buys an exclusive period for a game. That could work but it puts Apple in the position where it needs to guarantee subscription content on a regular basis whilst basically taking out all the oxygen for every other premium title so survivability becomes linked to the 1-2 slots you get a month with this model. Casual gamers don’t need any more “free” games and I don’t think gamers have come around to the iPad as a games console idea yet.

Personally, I would be happy if they just announced season 8 of Game of Thrones available for free on Apple TV tomorrow. I don’t think we’ll get that and I don’t think we’ll get a subscription bundle or a games service either.