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Plex goes retro with subscription game-streaming service Arcade

Get ready to revisit such Atari classics as Centipede and Missile Command.

Steven Musil Night Editor / News
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. He's been hooked on tech since learning BASIC in the late '70s. When not cleaning up after his daughter and son, Steven can be found pedaling around the San Francisco Bay Area. Before joining CNET in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers.
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Steven Musil
2 min read
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Plex Arcade features classic Atari titles such as Centipede and Missile Command.

Plex

Plex is best known as a media-streaming platform for live TV and music, as well as content from an attached hard drive or host computer via the Plex server. But now the company behind the app is aiming to draw more users with the addition of a subscription game-streaming service that offers iconic old-school Atari games.

Plex said Tuesday its Plex Arcade will offer access to such retro classics as Centipede, Missile Command and Lunar Lander, as well as allow users to play and store their own ROMs in the library. Plex said its games can be played on Android (mobile and TV), iOS, tvOS and the Chrome web browser.

Plex Arcade debuts as tech giants and media companies have been more broadly experimenting with subscription services. Google has made a big push into gaming, and in 2019, it launched Stadia, a service that lets people stream games from the cloud instead of playing them on a console.

Apple followed up later that year with the launch of Apple Arcade, a game-subscription service lets Apple users play more than 145 games across iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Mac and Apple TV devices for $5 a month. 

Like Apple Arcade, a Plex Arcade subscription costs $5 a month after a free seven-day trial. Users with a Plex Pass account will pay $3 a month. But unlike Apple Arcade, Plex is focusing on the classic games of yester-century.

However, the game server currently works only on Windows and macOS because because cloud gaming partner Parsec doesn't yet offer its libraries on Linux or other platforms.