Antstream Arcade, the retro gaming cloud gaming service, has built out a massive library of games. After launching on PlayStation and Xbox consoles, conducting a small round of layoffs and the addition and removal of several notable games, we have to ask: is Antstream Arcade a little too ambitious?
The Console Launches Have Been Successful, But Leave Much To Be Desired
Antstream Arcade has launched on Xbox and PlayStation consoles over the last year. Allowing gamers the ability to either buy a year’s subscription or a lifetime subscription. Unlike the launch on iOS devices, you can’t use your details to buy Antstream on say Xbox to login on say an Android phone. Now, this is due to Microsoft and Sony’s polices around data protection. It begs the question if launching on those platforms was a worthwhile endeavor. If you want to play games via Antstream Arcade on your console and on your PC, you’re out of luck. Hopefully, Antstream will be able to make this cross-platform approach with their service work more fluently with one subscription. We will have to wait and see.
The Library Is Impressive But The Removals Sting
This is an issue for all streaming services, but it stings more for Antstream due to them marketing their platform around “game preservation”. Despite Antstream’s best efforts to build out a huge offering of games over the last year, a few of the larger publishers who were partners with Antstream decided not to renew their contracts. The publishers in question were Warner Brothers Games, Interplay Entertainment and Codemasters which together accounted for over 100 games removed from Antstream. These loses have lead to Antstream to strengthen their partnerships with companies like Data East, Atari, and Piko Interactive as a way to keep adding new games. But despite each of their strong libraries, none of them can offer alternatives to popular games like Earthworm Jim or Mortal Kombat, which were previously removed.
Game Preservation Is Noble But A Bit Too Misguided
Right now this final point is the most divisive but hear me out. Game Preservation is noble but a bit misguided for Antstream. The game library of Antstream has been built up from licensing games from 18 different gaming platforms. However, the entire Antstream service has a mere fraction of the titles available on the platforms they emulate. It is speculated that platforms like the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amiga, and Amstrad home computers each have over 10,000 games each, so the few hundred each platform has on Antstream is around 5% of the potential titles. Likewise, the Atari 2600 has around 500+ officially published games. With the platform on Antstream only having a tiny fraction of the potential games that it could have.
As we mentioned in the previous point, many game publishers have pulled their games from Antstream. This makes preserving those games via Antstream harder. Personally, I feel Antstream needs to stop marketing itself as a game preservation platform. As not all the games they will ever have will always be available.
What do you think? Is Antstream Arcade becoming a little too ambitious? Let us know on social media.
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