Plex's New Arcade Feature Brings Classic Games To Your Home Media Center

Plex, the home media center software for users who prefer to avoid streaming services, has added a major new feature that it says it had been thinking about for years: classic games. With this built-in feature, users can now access some classic games titles through the same software they use to access their music and movies.

Plex is, put simply, an app you run on your TV and server software you run on a laptop. With the two, you can easily access movies and music on your server and stream them on your TV, computer, and mobile devices. The service has also slowly expanded with third-party content from various partners.

The latest evolution in that expansion is Plex Arcade, a new premium feature that gives users access to a bunch of old school games. The Plex team says they've partnered with Atari to license a library of its classic games like Motor Psycho and Lunar Lander.

As well, Plex has teamed up with Parsec for their low-latency game streaming tech to power the new feature. As you'd expect, this addition isn't free, though it's also not very expensive at $2.99/month for those who already have the Plex Pass. If you don't have the pass, you'll pay a bit more at $4.99/month.

Plex Arcade is ultimately a newborn feature that may only expand in the future if Plex sees sufficient interest from users. 'If there's interest and we see some subs, it'll grow into the glorious pheasant we know it can be,' Plex said in a blog. At this point in time, Plex Arcade is available to servers running on macOS and Windows; the games can be played on mobile devices, tvOS, and Chrome browser.