All technical limitations of the new arcade aside (can’t run on Linux), I can’t see myself using the arcade function.
This is for one reason, pricing.
Your pricing is actually reasonable on a per user basis, IMHO. However, it misses the boat when you want users to pay AND get downstream users to pay for it.
For instance, I have ~10 people in my family / coworkers I share with.
I’m not going to enable this and have each of them sign up for a subscription. (Most wouldn’t anyways)
That means you make zero from my server and users.
I suggest a “server side licensing” model, where you can either have each user sign up for X dollars a month or the server owner can pay Y dollars a month, to forgo all downstream fees for the users they share with.
Obviously, that price point would be higher, but you’d at least make some money from folks like me.
Ask me for $40/mo so my users can do this without the hassle? insert shut up and take my money meme
Whatever, your business. You have to monetize it how you see fit. My point is, under this scheme, you are leaving money on the table.
shrug Now to forget this feature until such a thing exists.
Ask me for $40/mo so my users can do this without the hassle? insert shut up and take my money meme
$40/mo for games you can already play and get for free else where wow, not only is that give Plex bad ideas for an already bad idea but seems you may have missed understood how bad this idea is lol.
What Plex have done is asked us to pay to link a 3rd party app to you account to play games that you can play through said third part app for free outside of plex (from some googling).
After I found all this out not to mention the absolute horror it is to even get working (which it doesn’t for 99% just looking here and on reddit) I cancelled my free trial.
Oh I get that however the price point was never reasonable to start with due to it all being done via a 3rd party that offer the service for free outside of plex and with far less hassle, that’s what I was trying to point out.
If this had been a completely excusive thing that didn’t rely on a 3rd party then yeah its reasonable but the implementation doesn’t make any price point reasonable or fair which is unfortunate as it did sound awesome at first but the more you look into it and try and get it working the more it feels like a make a quick buck scheme
Saying “Well, to be fair, nobody has asked you to do anything” is incredibly disingenuous in my opinion- their blog post blurts outright “If there’s interest and we see some subs, it’ll grow into the glorious pheasant we know it can be. But if you guys drop the ball, it’ll die on the vine like a stomped ass goomba.” That unquestionably sounds like they’re putting the responsibility of this service living or dying on me, even if I don’t like the features/bugs/lack of docker & linux support at launch or price point.
In my opinion (which, I know, no-one asked for haha!). This is a great idea, but kinda half baked. There are a couple of things that wont work in my instance.
Linux Server Support is a bare minimum requirement - Without that support, it’s of no use to me or my users. Linux is, and has always been the reliable stalwart ally, with far fewer failures and crashes than I ever experienced on any other platforms. I’m running it in Docker with hardware transcoding, with mapped NFS NAS drives for data. I like it, it’s stable.
Pricing is… well… to put it bluntly - Silly. As a lifetime account holder, I find it exasperating, that I’d have to pay again for a feature only I can use under my account. If my users want it, they have to pay for their own? If I’m hosting it, and my hardware/bandwidth/electricity/storage is being used to play and stream this content, I don’t see where the cost to Plex is involved in this “feature”? How is it different from PlexAmp in that sense? A lifetime license should either cover this, and if not, at least offer a lifetime license for this feature as well as a monthly option, and make it cover all of the users of the server. I mean, it’s not an external service like Tidal, right?
What is to stop a person just using something like http://www.virtualatari.org? It’s more convenient, and with an arguably larger library. What benefits does Plex Arcade bring that cant be found elsewhere at either a once off price, or for free? The only thing I can think of is integration, but is it worth a monthly ‘per user’ cost? A $30 Raspberry Pi can play these games exquisitely, and it costs a tiny amount by comparison, so much as in it is a single payment with no ongoing costs. So the argument that it makes it simple to play games on your TV is patently indefensible.
These are genuine questions and concerns, I’m not trying to be confrontational, or demanding something for nothing. I just worry that this is going to become a trend. First Tidal, now this. This is a slippery slope.
There is no server capacity from PLEX or Parsec involved. Basically you need a one-time download of the emulation cores (Retroarch is open source) and everything is done locally.
Yeah it was a non starter for me. Granted Linux server support may come at some point but paying a monthly fee to host data on my own server on top of Plex Pass? Seems completely insane when looking at the alternatives which are free. I’ll stick with my RetroPie thanks.
IF I am not mistaken, the price is associated to the licensing fee Plex must pay to Parsec.
There is no doubt this is an exciting feature. I personally couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. So, thank you Plex team for a job well done. That being said, let’s not forget, most of us only play these games whenever we feel nostalgia for the good old days. Realistically, how often does that happen? Let’s exaggerate and say once a month.
Now let’s do the math. I use plex almost every day of the month and I pay $6.49 CAD/month for it. Suddenly, I am expected to pay $3.99 CAD/month for a feature that I might use once a month?
One way to work around this problem is offering a onetime subscription fee like Plex itself. Because that way, I can close my eyes, pay the onetime fee, and get it over with, instead of looking back at the end of each month and wonder why I am paying for this service that I didn’t end up using?
Plex team, I realize we don’t say this enough, so once more, thank you for all your hard work to make this happen. You da best
Forgetting whatever technical problems people have getting it to work, the fact is that it exists. And since Plex charges for their software, royalty and licensing requirements come into effect that wouldn’t come into effect otherwise. Downloading ROMs even for MAME or whatever emulator you use is TECHNICALLY not legal, and a gray area even if you happen to actually OWN the original software.
Are YOU likely to have the FBI knock on your door for downloading the 10,000 ROM .zip for MAME? No. Can Plex potentially be sued by Sega, Nintendo, Atari or whoever because Plex has sold Plex Pass subscriptions touting Arcade as a feature? Youbetcha.
That said, I think the monthly pricing needs to be looked at. I mean, I totally get having to pay for it for the reasons above. I just think it would be an easier see as a yearly or lifetime pass. Once the bugs are worked out, of course.
Yeah, per user pricing is dead on arrival for me and my users. All the people I am sharing with use it maybe once a week to once a month. So seldom that they would never be ok with paying for plex since they just have other hobbies.
I would like to get this to run on my server though and tinker with it and maybe one or two users will have some fun hours with it.
I think a one time upgrade for the server owner would be a good idea.
i wouldn’t mind paying a monthly fee to have that feature on my server but to have every user pay for it is just ridiculous. my server gets accessed couple of times per week from friends, they will never pay a monthly fee to use that feature.
Linux support is a real killer here for me, though pricing as well.
Assuming one does supply their own roms what exactly are we paying for here? On top of that how are parsec getting away with providing emulators, surely there are issues with legality here.
I mean I definitely want emulators don’t get me wrong but maybe the focus would be better working with something like retroarch or making it possible to run locally without having to connect to some third party service(it sounds like it already does)
I’m all for this feature and think its great Plex are looking into expanding what they offer. If Plex added Game Streaming, eBooks, Comics & Audio Books to the app All my needs would be met from the same Application.
However theirs no way I’d pay a monthly subscription for this, I paid for a lifetime Plex Pass to support plex and to avoid a monthly bill. I already have Retropie on a raspberry pi that barely gets used for playing old games on my tv at home. I see this mainly being used when I find myself with 20mins to kill while out somewhere on my mobile device so will maybe get used once a month. Also needs to be on a account not individual users.
I’d support a once off payment to add an additional feature to plex pass. So i never had to worry about it again. I’d also support a Kickstarter type thing for features like this to be developed and added for free to Plex Pass subscribers. I think if this was done for eBooks and Comics you’d have alot of people jump in.
I don’t need the Atari games and would never use them. I have my own collection of ROMs the same as my own collection of TV Shows and Movies.
Just my 2c I want this feature and other features like it too succeed but I don’t see it happening under the current pricing model.
Some food for thought, my two cents if you will, in regards to pricing and why PLEX Arcade could be a game changer…
Obviously everyone is entitled to their own opinion. To say that the rollout has been bumpy is a severe understatement, but… PLEX Arcade has the potential to offer something no one else can: The ability to have a central, organized, emulation library that you and your friends/family can access pretty much ANYWHERE. No need for emulator apps on every device. No need to have duplicates of your roms on multiple devices… and no real need to be tech savvy in order to enjoy this service (which is great for your non-techie friends and family members). I too have several Raspberry Pi’s set up for emulation. I also have a massive central library/collection of roms and emulators that I manage through Launchbox. I’ve even dabbled with VMs (virtual machines) to try and set up a way for several computers in our home to share one unified emulation experience. Now anyone with a browser or a phone can play my roms, and that’s kind of magical.
I’m a PLEX Pass member, so my arcade subscription is only 3 bucks a month. I’m also lucky enough to be a Lifetime PLEX Pass member. I’ve paid my dues to PLEX, and just like most of you here I expect to enjoy all the future updates and additions that PLEX may bring to our media streaming experience. When it comes to streaming video files or content, be it TV, movies, or even live TV, its all in-house for them. That’s their jam. But game streaming is a whole other ball game. That entails executing an emulator, virtually playing a piece of software, rendering it, and streaming it with real-time, two-way controller input. They joined with PARSEC (a game streaming company) in order to provide this optional service for us. Parsec provides PLEX the technology needed to make all this work. That incurs licensing fees and other costs that PLEX needs to cover, at least partially, with the arcade subscription. It’s the reason it is separate and it’s the reason it is OPTIONAL.
Should it work on Linux? YES. Should it support more platforms? YES. Should it be easier to set up? DEFINITELY. I know some of these limitations (and many more) are actively being worked on. If you have compatible hardware then you can choose to support this feature and its development, and if you don’t that is TOTALLY fine. I personally want to see where it goes and I’m pretty darn excited.
I know the issue with pricing for both plex and the 3rd party, I’m curious if they could implement something similar to the live TV dvr, where we pay say $5-$10/mo or something and it only allows 2-4 active game streams to be used, so were technically paying on a per user, everyone has access but not everyone needs to buy separately.
I think it would be more sensible to have a concurrent connections based licence so that you could licence say 4 concurrent uses and that way up to 4 of your users could play arcade at any one time. #This is how a lot of streaming subs work in general. Parsec is clearly charging Plex for the commercial licence of their hosting software and yet we as the users of it are not commercial users and as such our licencing should be free. I actually dont mind paying for the licence but would prefer to pay say £10pm and be allowed to have 5 concurrent connections. Also as I’m paying for the commercial licence i would hope that we could have access to many of the “host” controls and settings that are offered in the Parsec App, but through Plex settings.