Winners and Losers: Apple Music Classical arrives in the App Store and E3 gets cancelled

It’s Sunday, meaning it’s time to look back and see which headlines brought out the best (and the worst) of the tech industry this week.

This past week has been a surprisingly eventful one for Netflix rumours as we heard the streaming service could be about to bring its games library to TV sets and make it possible for you to use your iPhone as a game controller. Not only that, but the company’s ‘Basic with Ads’ tier is now available on Apple TV, allowing users to save cash by opting for the ad-supported plan over standard Netflix. 

Meanwhile, Huawei launched its P60 and Mate X3 lines and Nintendo gave 3DS and Wii users one last chance to download their favourite classic games before shutting its eShop down for good.

Our winner this week is Apple as the company launched its latest music streaming venture, leaving E3 as our loser after the ESA (the company behind the event) put what could be the final nail in the coffin for the once iconic gaming expo.

Winner: Apple 

Our winner this week is Apple after it officially filled a content gap that mainstream music streaming services have neglected for too long with the launch of Apple Music Classical.

The new library – which actually resides in a completely separate app from Apple Music – includes 700 expert-made playlists, composer biographies and deep dives into significant classical pieces. 

The quality ranges all the way up to 192 kHz/24-bit lossless and tracks recorded with Dolby Atmos support Apple’s own immersive Spatial Audio feature. 

The extensive library and high quality of the tracks are both exciting pieces of news for classical music fans, but the best announcement is that all of this is included in the standard Apple Music subscription. This means that those who are already paying for Apple Music won’t need to spend any extra to access all of these classical recordings. 

The only exception to this is the Apple Music Voice Plan, which is the cheapest music tier Apple offers. Users on the Siri-powered plan will need to pay more than twice their regular subscription cost to upgrade to the standard £10.99 plan if they want to access the new tracks. 

The launch of Apple Music Classical gives the company’s existing streaming service a new appeal to fans of classical music, while the continued support for lossless tracks widens the gap between Apple and Spotify when it comes to streaming quality. 

Loser: E3 

After a rough few years for E3, America’s largest gaming expo has officially been cancelled for 2023. 

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) this week announced that the event would not be taking place this June, citing “resourcing challenges” along with the fact that interested companies wouldn’t have had playable demos ready for the summer. 

Major names including Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and Ubisoft, had already confirmed that they would not be in attendance this year. 

Meanwhile, IGN has reportedly seen an email addressed to members stating that E3 2023 “simply did not garner the sustained interest necessary to execute it in a way that would showcase the size, strength, and impact of our industry”. 

E3 2023 was supposed to mark the long-awaited return of the event, as the ESA had previously teased its first in-person show since the Covid-19 pandemic prompted cancellations back in 2020. 

Considering the fact this is the second year in a row that E3 has been called off after the ESA decided against throwing a virtual event in 2022, the future isn’t looking too bright for the once-packed gaming expo.