Plex Arcade - A Not Ready Product

Plex Labs
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As much as I love the idea of Plex Arcade, it is clearly an unfinished product with a poorly executed rollout.

First off, the instructions are nowhere near as complete as they should be for a consumer product. There are not enough details on how to set up nor proper troubleshooting instructions.

That being said, following the provided instructions to a T, does not get the system up and working.

I have subscribed to Plex Arcade.

I have linked it to my Parsec Account

I have validated both are true in the account settings.

I have added the cores I have following these instructions: Naming and organizing Game files and Cores | Plex Support

First off, the promised Atari games we’re not installed on my system and making it not possible to play.

Second, attempting to play a Nintendo games results in this error:
The game transcoder exited unexpectedly.
Error code: 8005 (Game Server)

Third: It will not add all the systems I am attempting to add. So far, it will only add Arcade, NES and SNES. Any attempts to add N64, Genesis and Master System will not appear in Plex.

Fourth: The Arcade games will run, but the colours are completely off making the games unplayable.

Fifth: Even though SNES was added, the games will not play at all. Just a blank screen.

This is a clear sign that this product was not ready for mainstream, but it definitely was rush out for who knows what reason.

I do love this idea and I really want it to work, but if this is going to be an extra expense on top of a Plex Pass, then these types of issues do not exist. I have signed up on the trial, and from the looks of things I won’t even be able to get my system working by the time the trial is up.

As much as I want this to work, I will not pay for this service.

Server Version#: 1.21.2.3939

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Agreed. I love the idea but hate how Plex has currently implemented it. I hope to see more features for Plex Arcade in the future.

Features

  1. Emulators that need to work under the Plex Aracade without custom work at a minimum: NES, SNES, N64, Sega. Others can be added probably but those are the main ones I think most people would care about. Atari and even MAME should have been an added console later after the inital success of the previous mentioned ones.

  2. Subscription Fee: Huh, I kind of see why it’s an added fee ontop of the regular media fee but it’s really dumb for people that bought the lifetime pass for you ask them to pay more. Very lame in my opinion and goes outside the veribage orignally advertised for lifetime members. If Plex cares about making money off of this then raise the current subscription fees including the lifetime one. Maybe just lower the Plex Arcade price even more for lifetime members but I feel Plex is being very lame to those people by adding “different” fees. I’m sure though if they combined fees and just up’d them a little (and doing the other two things I mentioned) then the subscription numbers in general would go way up and they’d make more money.

  3. Multiplayer. Adding multiplayer capabilities would be insane and push Plex Arcade over the top to where everyone would want to use it. By multiplayer I mean being able to play 2+ player versions of the game with your plex friends much like you can watch movies with your plex friends.

If Plex did those three things I would be dancing with joy. Until then this is a gimmic idea that has VERY niche use.

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Yep. I spent a couple hours setting it up and every time I try to play a game on the PC or a different device—that one game will work, but then all of PMS (not just games) hangs and becomes inaccessible from all devices.

I love the idea of it, but I’ve canceled my sub and look forward to a couple months from now when it may actually work.

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Plex needs to fix bugs with streaming before even considering features like Arcade. Emby is pretty solid these days …

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Yeah, I’m going to cancel mine as well until this is ready for prime time.

I would love to hear someone from the Plex team on this thread to help with these issues or at least provide some more details on what is happening.

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Emby is looking more and more tempting for me.

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Wtf is all I can say.

What direction is the company going? Seems like they are looking at any options to create revenue…

I’ve moved over to Channels DVR. Recording is way better and all my movie and tv shows are added to it. Plus they have TVE options.

Again, wtf arcade games? Huh?!?

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I came here to say the exact same thing, but my experience was worse, as I couldn’t even get to that stage.

Unable to link Parsec account, as the approval button doesn’t function. I have tried Firefox, Edge, Chome browsers without luck. I tried the support page, and get a 404. Changing my avatar in the account settings for Parsec doesn’t stick.

Initially I thought the Parsec button issue was related to Plex, as I can’t bring up the login page for the Plex website in Firefox, and have to use Chrome. A plugin or something is interfering, but Plex is the only webpage I have this issue on, and it’s on multiple computers with sync’d Firefox settings. However, trying other browsers with different plugins (Chrome), or without plugins (Edge), I was able to login to plex, but still unable to bring up the Parsec login.

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Well what they should have done was made it beta and let people know that and give them free access to it until the bugs are worked out. But what do I know…I’m one of those people that think the UI should look the same on ALL devices running Plex.

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^^THIS. I came. here to see if anyone else is having the same issue. Apparently I am not the only one. I have to reboot the server every time to resolve this problem which can be a problem when I am not home.

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I have to subscribe to set it up. Fine.

Each one of my 5 kids then have to subscribe, as it says they aren’t subscribed. (Seriously?)

AND, we can’t play it unless we are on the local network? (When we are home we have an Xbox and better quality games handy.)

That’s $32.94 a month, so they can play old games, at home. I’m out.

4 Likes
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you need to validate your email address with Parsec. Check your inbox. I stumbled on this step too.

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ME TOO! I was wondering if it was Arcade that was hosing my server. Looks like I am not the only one.

Love the idea, would pay a single fee for it, but as it stands now, this thing is too buggy/broken to pay for. I have cancelled my sub after the trial.

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I agree that there should be some “out of the box” cores that just plain work. Not sure it needs to be as many four… But I personally would want to see NES and ATARI working “flawlessly” at a minimum. The others are more complicated systems and more prone to buggy behavior. Not that they should be hard to implement either, but…

I think we’re at the mercy of licensing agreements, here. Either Parsec charges you directly, or they charge Plex. I don’t think its fair to ask Plex to absorb such a cost indefinitely when a lifetime Plex Pass is only $120. They ARE a business. I think maybe they should negotiate a separate lifetime pass for the arcade service.

Absolutely! That would be an awesome feature to add, and one that I hope is on their drawing board!

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this is the case.

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I really have no issues with the idea, the price or the licensing.

Somebody suggested retroarch, which I do love using, but for my wife and kids, I’d prefer a much easier option. I also think this will be one of the better ways to plays these games on an Apple TV.

I just wished this worked. It’s clearly not ready. If would be much better if they had a plex pass beta to iron out all of these kinks first before having to charge everyone for an unfinished product.

I will happily pay for the monthly services. I think it’s reasonable, but for now I have cancelled my subscription and will watch closely until it is ready.

I really wish we heard more from the devs about what all the major issues are and troubleshooting steps.

Honestly, I am all for this idea, but if this was my dev team, we would never have launched just yet.

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100% agreed.

No aspect of Arcade worked for me. I could set a library up, but the default Atari games weren’t added, downloaded, even the folder they were supposed to be downloaded to was not created. No cores were downloaded, no folder where the cores should be located created, or any entries in the RetroCores.xml file added.

The instructions on how to add games, or cores came after the product released and I purchased my subscription.

I meet all the requirements to run this, but I do have plex installed in a non-standard folder. Still, this is the first thing in Plex I’ve seen flatout fail to work.

I get its a first release, but it’s too early to be charging for something that even in supported configurations does absolutely nothing. I’ll check back in a few months to see a few round of updates helps.

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What a relief this thread is. I’m not in agreement with some of these responses. I personally think that it is fantastic that Plex is introducing this feature. As soon as I found out about it, I signed up for it. I was under an impression it might be buggy, and a bit disappointed to have to pay even as a Plex Pass member. But boy, after trying this on two different machines, I can say that I am having the exact same issues as everyone else here. Those in the gaming community might understand the reference to Cyberpunk, but this was not ready for release yet. I will pay for the next month or two. If it is not resolved, I will sadly cancel, and come back in six months to see if it is still around. I wish Plex would have worked a little harder on the rollout and testing with this one. I truely do hope it doesn’t die on the vine, because I would totally use it. I don’t have time for the troubleshooting and errors, and I just need something I can pick up and play. I’m afraid there are too many other options in the market that would allow for this now, and I’ve invested in several others at the moment. Good luck Plex, and I hope for both of us that you all get it worked out.

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I might be in the minority here, but I disagree with the general theme of this thread. I think it is a brilliant concept, a fair price, and a step in the right direction for Plex. I see this as what it can be more than what it currently is. As soon as I heard about it, I knew I had to fund it to support this being developed. I would even be willing to be a tester much like the beta update channel for the server program itself. This still needs work, but I am in full support of whatever this ends up being. I will not cancel my subscription unless Plex abandons it.

This is totally something I see happening, considering Parsec is the backend, and I hope that’s in the cards. That being said, I also want more platforms. Considering Parsec supports GameCube and PS2, I would love to see those systems added and the latency addressed.

^ Enough said there. I want to know how the development process is going because it would be reassuring to have an idea as to how things are going internally.

On top of those features, I would love to see:

  • A GUI interface for custom controller mapping
  • More options for graphics upscaling and framerate control
  • More stability out of the Game Transcoder
  • Most importantly, more clients supported. I would pay so much more to be able to do this on my Xbox or even just the desktop program instead of Chrome.
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ETA Prime has a great review on Plex Arcade, which brings up some of the issues we’re discussing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1I2S8pAxqU