Cloud gaming company Antstream Arcade announced Friday that it plans to launch on Xbox on July 21, bringing its library of more than 1,300 retro video games to Microsoft’s gaming platform.
This marks the first time a third-party cloud gaming service will be released on the Xbox platform, as well as the first console to natively feature Antstream Arcade, currently available for Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, Amazon Fire sticks, and Samsung TV.
Antstream works in much the same way as a streaming service would. It’s an app you can launch that gives you access to its library of officially licensed video games, which you can play freely via streaming them from Antstream’s cloud server.
The library consists of an assortment of PC, console, and arcade games from the 1980s and ’90s, roughly ranging from 1982 to 1994. This includes classic computers like the Amiga, Commodore 64, MSX, and ZX Spectrum, as well as old consoles such as the Atari 2600/7800, NES, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Lynx, Game Boy, and the original PlayStation. More games are added on a monthly basis.
Antstream’s game library is primarily from third-party developers such as Midway, Namco, Konami, and Atari. The highlights of its lineup include the original 1992 Mortal Kombat; SNK’s arcade shooter Metal Slug X; the 1981 arcade edition of Pac-Man; and the DOS version of LucasArts’ 1993 adventure game Sam & Max Hit the Road.
In addition to the games themselves, Antstream users can participate in head-to-head tournaments, couch-based cooperative play, custom minigames, and challenges.
“Despite living in an age of incredible technology, I found it wasn’t easy enough to access the games I loved growing up,” wrote Steve Cottam, Antstream’s CEO, in a release. “We believe in the preservation and accessibility of all games: the great, the impossible, and the forgotten or lesser-known too. I’m very proud to bring the Antstream Arcade platform to the Xbox community.”
Both preservation and accessibility are hot topics in the video game industry. Several out-of-print games were abruptly turned into dead media by Sony’s decision to sunset its older digital storefronts. Earlier this year, when Nintendo announced it would close the eShops for its Wii-U and 3DS systems, historians and collectors raced to grab up the games that were exclusive to either platform before they were permanently lost.
A recent study by the Video Game History Foundation discovered that only 13% of the video games released in North America before 2010 are still available for purchase in any format. While projects like Antstream still share the same vulnerability as any streaming platform, where the games in question only exist for as long as Antstream’s licensing stays in effect, there are still a few games in Antstream Arcade’s library that, without it, wouldn’t be legally playable anywhere else.
The Xbox version of Antstream can be purchased as a subscription service with a $29.99 annual fee; lifetime access costs $79.99. At time of writing, the Xbox version of Antstream Arcade doesn’t appear to have a free-to-play edition or any attached microtransactions.
