Antstream Arcade’s extensive catalog ranges from early Atari releases through Commodore, Sega, Nintendo and original PlayStation era games. These will be instantly available on Xbox One and S/X without installation, download or setup and carefully optimized through a rigorous quality control process to ensure the gameplay is as the developer intended.
The platform supports instant cloud game saves, online high scores and resume play features across multiple devices.
The Arcade’s burgeoning library of officially licensed retro IPs adds more titles every week, including brand-new games for classic consoles by indie developers such as Flea and Reshoot R.
Antstream Arcade also brings a revolutionary way of playing retro games with its unique technology that mods the originals to create new mini-game challenges, giving both veteran and first-time players a fresh approach to enjoying the classics. Play as Pac-Man and avoid collecting the dots or where Pac-Man does the chasing and Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde are on the run!
Competitors can enter tournaments and challenge others to high-score duels and create giant slayer community battles, or simply compete for the best score on earth. Additionally, win gems, rack up achievements, connect with others and build a profile to show off gaming prowess.
Steve Cottam, CEO Antstream grew up with Manic Miner as one of his favorite games; “Despite living in an age of incredible technology, I found it wasn’t easy enough to access the games I loved growing up and I wanted to be able to easily share scores and compete against friends” he said “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”.
“Many of us grew up playing these games, so the ability to stream them on Xbox consoles and share these experiences with our friends and family is incredible,” said Sarah Bond, CVP of Game Creator Experience and Ecosystem at Microsoft. “We’re pleased that with Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub’s technology benefits and Azure cloud services we can help enable Antstream to reach more players.”
Antstream Arcade is already available on PC, Mac, Linux, Android, Android TV, Firestick, Samsung TV and browser (beta). Xbox will be the first major console to support the Arcade natively and Antstream will be the world’s first third-party cloud gaming service to feature on Xbox.
Antstream Arcade on Xbox is £/$/€29.99 annually or £/$/€79.99 for lifetime access. All future games and features will be included. It will be available in the following regions: Europe, UK, USA, Canada, and the Vatican City.
About Antstream Arcade
Antstream Arcade was incorporated in 2013 by CEO and founder, Steve Cottam, a veteran game developer and passionate retro gamer. Based in the UK, it is the world’s largest retro game cloud service licensing over 3000 retro and classic indie game titles (over 1300 of which are live on the platform) and backed by industry stalwarts including Tencent and Atari.
Antstream was officially launched in 2020 and has so far amassed over 3m downloads. Since then it has also won multiple awards including MCV Develop 2022 for best platform, Develop Star 2022 for best technical innovation and Tiga 2022 heritage in games award.
Antstream Arcade has secured official licenses for all games that feature on the platform from IP owners, game developers and publishers. This ensures a fair revenue share to owners of games contrary to many sources of retro games online and popular marketplaces.
Looks really interesting. Excellent article Dave.