Plex Launches Retro Video Game Streaming Service (betanews.com) 52
Brian Fagioli, writing at BetaNews: Today, Plex launches a retro video game streaming service that should make playing older titles even easier. Called "Plex Arcade," it currently only offers games licensed from Atari, so we are talking really old-school stuff here, folks (think Centipede and Combat). At $4.99 month ($2.99 for those with Plex Pass) it is rather affordable. Unfortunately, there is one big catch -- Linux users are being left out.
Why? (Score:2)
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It will suck because if lag. Modern games are designed to incorporate the lag, old games expect zero lag.
Many of the complications suck because of lag and poor emulation too.
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What lag? Atari 2600 cartridges had like 32k ROM size. You could load that over the internet a hundred times over, keep all copies in RAM, and still never even notice the impact.
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It says streaming. I guess the idea is to keep the ROM of of the hands of the users.
Even local the the emulator needs to be developed for low lag, maybe even rollback.
Re: Why? (Score:1)
Plex runs your media on a local server. It says your server OS needs to be compatible with the emulator. So theyâ(TM)ll just ship the ROM to your server where you run it over LAN to something like a Roku device or whatever else is compatible.
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What lag? Atari 2600 cartridges had like 32k ROM size. You could load that over the internet a hundred times over, keep all copies in RAM, and still never even notice the impact.
From the pictures I was seeing, it looked like these were Atari 7800 games. That makes them like, 5200 better.
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Windows users?
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Who has a paddle? The original Pong came with analog paddles, the ColecoVision controllers had analog paddles also, and a numeric keypad plus two side buttons, and the Coleco Adam was compatible and also came with a single controller instead of two. The TRS-80 had analog joysticks that did not return to center a
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It is frequently the lack of a controller that works reasonably like the controller that the old computer systems took for granted, that makes these things far less satisfying than you would think.
Any controller that is terrible and hurts my hand a lot, would be perfect replacement for the 2600 controller I used as a kid.
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Proof that you can make anything, no matter how stupid, a 'service' and charge monthly for it.
I can see the point of game-pass type services where you just pay monthly and can play whatever new games without buying each.
But decades-old games? Many of which people have already bought more than once? All of which are trivial to torrent? ... and which often find themselves in retro consoles for sale at mall kiosks for $20 around the holidays?
60 bucks a year for that seems pretty dumb IMO.
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Not to mention all of the old school games (and emulators) have been around as torrents for years. Anyone that would be remotely interested in these games probably already has a huge collection any way. MAME is just one example that comes to mind.
Yes, my collection of 2600 games have been eating up a full megabyte of my raid array for years now.
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how long till an iOS ban or will apple need to che (Score:3, Interesting)
how long till an iOS ban or will apple need to check each game on this.
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how long till an iOS ban or will apple need to check each game on this.
Actually, Apple’s policy specifically permits most of what this announcement covers. The ban Apple has been enforcing recently is against cloud-hosted streaming apps—presumably because the content is outside of the customer’s and Apple’s control—but Apple has allowed self-hosted streaming apps for years. See: Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, Nvidia, etc., all of which allow you to stream your games from a PC or console to your iDevice or Apple TV.
The one sticking point here might be t
Tech choice seems odd (Score:2)
Relying on a Parsec-based solution? And at the cost of not supporting Linux, why?
For Atari/arcade-style games, they are simply better off with emulation at the client/endpoint side - e.g. using something like RetroArch at the endpoint or jsAtari in a web browser. Any system that has the CPU power to run the Plex app is not going to have an issue running an embedded Emulator for an Atari platform -- running the game remotely and trying to stream outputs and inputs seems just a purely unnecessary tech c
What about Plex Lifetime passes? (Score:1)
People purchased Plex Lifetime with the promise future things the service implements would be included. Now they seem to be splitting up their services under different branding each with their own fee.
Initially they added TIDAL subscriptions for a fee, now this arcade stuff, they've not updated apps in third-party systems (Drobo, Synology etc) for a while. Seems they are looking for more revenue streams.
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Honestly this is one of them "dark patterns" but its excusable because all the other works-like are also tedious to set up correctly and/or they only have limited transcoding abilities to get the proper data into whatever smart device you are trying to view it on (roku especially is problemat
Re: What about Plex Lifetime passes? (Score:1)
You used to be able to plugin MAME and other things in your Plex setup. They disappeared that function in favor of this.
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Uh, yeah ... (Score:2)
As someone with a Plex lifetime pass (Score:2)
...their moves lately have been worrying as they look like moves of an entity desperately trying to carve profitable niches because their main offering is losing money and the business is unsustainable.
Full list of games (Score:5, Informative)
For some reason neither the summary, nor the linked to article included the full list of games [www.plex.tv] - which is not that long. They are:
Arcade:
Avalanche
Centipede
Gravitar
Lunar Lander
Major Havoc
Millipede
Missile Command
Sky Diver
Sky Raider
Super Breakout
Atari 2600:
3D Tic-Tac-Toe
Adventure
Aquaventure
Combat
Haunted House
Human Cannonball
Outlaw - Gunslinger
Radar Lock
Solaris
Atari 7800:
Basketbrawl
Dark Chambers
Desert Falcon
Fatal Run
Food Fight
Motor Psycho
Ninja Golf
Planet Smashers
The collection seems a bit thin to me, even for the low price they are offering...
Maybe if they had Yars Revenge.
Plex is ass (Score:2)
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Emby went somewhat closed source, which is a trajectory pretty familiar to Plex users.
So now:
https://jellyfin.org/ [jellyfin.org]
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That's a fair concern, but Emby is C# too.
With emby, I had ultimately relented to their container because even c# aside, they tend to have very particular requirements around a myriad of media libraries, and their packaging efforts didn't do a very good job of compatibility with the base platform, so container it went.
Would I love an open source emby-alike that is packaged cleanly and not in c# or java? Sure, but I have not yet found one to my liking.
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Welcome to the forced transactional monetization of everything. you. do.
It doesn't need the interwebs...but let's design in a critical dependency just to make sure we can monetize you. Either by advertising, activity logging, outright spying, or requiring upgrades even if what you have works just fine.
It's hard to find games that don't require the interwebs...apparently including games that existed before the internet!
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Yes, but does it run ... (Score:1)
... on a genuine Atari 2600 over a genuine Atari modem?
Plex still exsist (Score:2)
Retr-no (Score:3)
And does it have a trackball? I could never enjoy games where the controls didn't match what I was already used to.
Re:Retr-no (Score:5, Informative)
It's neither.
At $5/month, it's $60/year. I believe you can legitimately get every game in that collection for less - either as an Atari collection in an app, or something from At Games who make the retro console.
At $36 for those with a subscription, it ain't cheap either for what it gives you.
It's not worth $5/month.
Atari's Greatest Hits iOS and Android app gets you 100 games for $10. https://www.atari.com/games/at... [atari.com]
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Keep in mind that it also allows you to load your own ROMs in and stream them as well, which I suspect will be the biggest selling point for most people in Plex’s demographic. I was already planning to rip all of my games in the next few years and then load them into Steam or GOG Galaxy, but if I can simply drop them into Plex and let it figure everything out for me, that may well be the route I go since I’m already a lifetime Plex Pass owner.
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Atari's Greatest Hits iOS and Android app gets you 100 games for $10. https://www.atari.com/games/atari-greatest-hits/ [atari.com]
Android: We're sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server.
Apple: Can't tell because it doesn't detect iTunes.
Although I think I do have a PC CD with those games. And just to be legal I even bought an Atari 2-player "Fightstick" which includes a bunch of games running on the Pi. They also have a SD card [microcenter.com] with it
Talk about wasting resources! (Score:2)
I bet it takes more data to send a single frame of gameplay than the complete ROM set of one of those games.
TFA says there is a free trial period... (Score:2)
Of one week. and it will work both on Windows and Mac Plex servers.
My Plex server is on a Synology, but being that plex server is free, I may spin one up on my mac, and try the service out.
Also, if you have plex pass, the price is reduced. I guess is not free, because Plex is partnering with a thrid party, and that third party wants/needs their cut.
Sorry Plex, you're dead to me now (Score:2)
So many caveats (Score:2)
"There are a few limitations you should be aware of: For now, the server only works on Windows and macOS (sorry, Parsec doesn’t offer their libraries on Linux or other platforms currently, meaning it is not available for servers running on Linux, NAS devices, or NVIDIA SHIELD); and gameplay is restricted to Android (mobile and TV), iOS, tvOS, and the Chrome web browser." On top of it being Plex.
Why would I give up my emus?
Affordable? (Score:2)
Linux users (Score:1)
terrible service does not support linux!!!1!!! (Score:2)
oh no