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Plex Launches Plex Arcade With Retro Games to Play
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According to the website Plex Arcade can only work on Windows or Mac servers. So, if I run Plex on a Synology NAS, I can’t use this.
Well - as a long time Plex user and Plex Pass holder, I won't be paying anything more for this either. Not saying it's a bad idea or anything. But I just feel like these retro 8-bit arcade titles are showing up in more and more places. A couple Xmas seasons ago, it was all the rage to buy those "75 in one" (or whatever number of games in one) game controllers or mini NES looking plastic boxes that attached to your TV set and ran a collection of these titles, all for sometimes as little as $20 or so. Tesla owners have some of them built into their cars too. And definitely, emulators are available to download for your Mac or PC to run this stuff.
If that wasn't enough? There's still a whole used game and console market out there for the vintage titles, so you can play them on the original equipment they were made for, using the correct controllers. There were at least 2 stores in my town that dealt exclusively in that stuff.
If that wasn't enough? There's still a whole used game and console market out there for the vintage titles, so you can play them on the original equipment they were made for, using the correct controllers. There were at least 2 stores in my town that dealt exclusively in that stuff.
Better this than leasing games, ebooks, songs, movies from a multibillion company, then trusting it will not georestrict or remove them or it will not force an update to your device, making old favourites disappear in favour of terrible "modern" offerings.
Exactly. But their idea is to take what's available for free and make profit. Subscription based of course, so you can have access to eeeeverythiiing in the world! Even if you play one game. It's like Apple Music, you pay monthly to have access to alllll the music in the world, except you might not be interested in 99.9% of the content. I personally tried to find some uncommon bands and rare music there to no avail. Actually over 50% of the music I have in my library is not available on Apple Music. That's how it works these days, they don't have a product, so they're selling ACCESS!
This is awesome!
I still have a huge collection of Atari, NES, Genesis, SNES, N64, and Game Cube games, but playing them on my main TV isn't ideal.
The idea of playing some old games anywhere that I have an Apple TV is a great selling point for this service.
I am a lifetime Plex Pass subscriber, so I will give it a try and see how it works out.
I don't think people should be stealing ROMs, but completely understand your thinking.
With modern gaming, one could easily lose access to play a game that was previously purchased.
There has been at least one thread on the MR forum reporting a developer that hid a "kill timer" in update of one of their games, making them unplayable after a certain date.
I have personally experienced the inability to play purchased games after an update of the OS, and the inability to go back to an OS when the game worked.
I recently had an tvOS update that automatically deleted about 30 games that are no longer on the tvOS App Store.
Compare that to my old console games that will still work after 30+ years, and will continue to be playable for a long time to come.
I know this is a comic relief type thing, but it’s still absurdly wrong
I was keenly interested in hardware emulation, including video game consoles, as a kid, and this is not what I saw.
70s and 80s games are usually awful by modern standards, except it's special to play them on real arcade machines with fancy controls (e.g. Centipede with the ball). The only games that seemed to hold up when played through an emulator with kb or a controller were og Super Mario Bros and Legend of Zelda. For most people who played these as kids, they remember them as great games still, and there's nostalgia when playing them again; I wasn't alive when these games were made.
Games got much better in the 90s, and some of them outdo their modern equivalents in some ways. To name a few, LoZ LttP and OoT, Pokémon gens 1 and 2, Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, and GoldenEye. Played them all for the first time in the 2010s. A lot of the mid-high tier ones are still decent compared to modern mobile games.
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Anyone tried this yet? I have. Keyboard mapping is broken (under macOS) and none of the games work for me on iOS. I have a mess of game ROMs, so I was excited to get this going, but it’s not quite ready for prime time. Certainly not yet ready to be paid for.
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call me nay-sayer, but this is stupid. the same could be accomplished by 1/100 of the resources by downloading the rom and running it on your device. plex client alone consumes at least 5x more resources by decoding HEVC or h264 videos, compared to running an emulator.
nothing to see here but some pretty in optimal and resource wasting way to somehow overcome app store regulations.
nothing to see here but some pretty in optimal and resource wasting way to somehow overcome app store regulations.
Plex Pass subscribers (and lifetime buyers) were told they wouldn’t have to pay for any future Plex features. That was the deal. Now Plex is changing the deal. It’s not cool, no matter how you try to swing it.
Did they though? I had a look on the Internet Archive and I don’t see any wording to that effect. The closest thing was:
...which is a bit wishy washy with regards to what you’ll get in the future. I guess it depends how you interpret that.
I’m not blindly supporting them, I think their product is pretty bad. I’m a lifetime license holder myself but never use it because it’s always been a buggy mess.
You can get Parsec for free anyway, so I have no idea why Plex charges for it.
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Very badly reviewed here: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021...s-paid-add-on-completely-botches-the-landing/
Looks like by default some of the packaged games aren't properly playable, and you'll need to manually add emulation cores to support other games; also consoles which require a BIOS/ROM copy aren't supported (can't see Plex being able to distribute those...).
Personal opinion: I'm a plex pass lifetime subscriber and won't be paying $2.99 a month for this - far better alternatives already available for game streaming and personally I'll stick with RetroPie for the TV and emulators on my mac/whatever else; my entire ROM collection is <10 GB - i don't need to stream it.
Looks like by default some of the packaged games aren't properly playable, and you'll need to manually add emulation cores to support other games; also consoles which require a BIOS/ROM copy aren't supported (can't see Plex being able to distribute those...).
Personal opinion: I'm a plex pass lifetime subscriber and won't be paying $2.99 a month for this - far better alternatives already available for game streaming and personally I'll stick with RetroPie for the TV and emulators on my mac/whatever else; my entire ROM collection is <10 GB - i don't need to stream it.
I have subscribed, but have not been able to get it to work, although this is most likely due to my GPU not being compatible on my Plex Server.
I am going to set up a Plex Server on a different Mac just for games and report my experience once I got it working.
I originally started using Plex because of all the problems on iTunes, Home Sharing, and the Computer app on tvOS.
It didn't take long for me to see the value in Plex, as it offered more capability, performed better, and had less problems than using Apple's own apps.
This makes sense to me, as I doubt Nintendo would ever be on board with this, at least at the price that Plex is charging for the service.
I am going to set up a Plex Server on a different Mac just for games and report my experience once I got it working.
Yeah, it has some bugs, but so does Apple's SW.
I originally started using Plex because of all the problems on iTunes, Home Sharing, and the Computer app on tvOS.
It didn't take long for me to see the value in Plex, as it offered more capability, performed better, and had less problems than using Apple's own apps.
According to Plex on their forums, this is due to licensing issues. They didn't get licensed to use the newer emulations cores, but did with the games they provide with the service.
This makes sense to me, as I doubt Nintendo would ever be on board with this, at least at the price that Plex is charging for the service.
I’m totally against piracy, but I’m also not going to support companies who try to profit from emulators that have been developed by open source communities.
Many arcade roms can be found on archive.org because they are abandonware now.
Man you probably didn’t play:
Elevator Action Returns
Dead Connection
The Outfoxies
Sunset Riders
Paperboy
Secret Agent
Rampage
Bubble Bobble
Rainbow Islands
Narc
The Gradius Series
The Final Round
Chase HQ
Hot Chase
That’s just a taster of some of the best games ever made!
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Thats incorrect. Here is an e mail from 2014:
Again, please note that these new rates will only affect new subscriptions moving forward. Of course, as we’ve mentioned in the past, we may need to charge separately for certain types of premium content, and we may need to adjust Plex Pass prices again in the future.
If the selling point is adding my own roms, that's exactly why it should be free, or at least part of a forever packge, even if its an addon, in my eyes. Are we pretending the majority of people buying this service are obtaining the roms legally? Steal some roms and pay for the service to stream them... ok...
In fairness, a similar argument can be made for your plex library. I just don't see the value here at this price point, but to each their own.
In fairness, a similar argument can be made for your plex library. I just don't see the value here at this price point, but to each their own.
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I played Paperboy and have seen Bubble Bobble, again seemed great for the time but not great anymore. Never heard of a lot of the others.
Well yeah, selling tools for piracy is Plex's entire business model. When someone says they're watching a movie on Plex, anyone automatically assumes piracy, just like when they say they're torrenting something.