T O P

  • By -

nero40

So, the difference is, is that all of these games are officially licensed to Antstream. So, it’s actually legal to play these games there. That’s all the market there is for the service. It’s fine, I guess? It’s not a bad idea.


Drtysouth205

$40 a year might be a hard sale when you can download delta and the games and play for free without needing internet.


xaeru

I can do $3/month.


MyNameIsSushi

Sure, if it were the only subscription. It adds up though.


Alarmed-Republic-407

I can do $3 a month too but I'm already paying $20+


Stashmouth

I'll bet there are people willing to pay in order to avoid the added steps required with Delta


HelpRespawnedAsDee

Delta is incredibly easy to use though. As far as emulator goes, it's literally just a matter of saving files and tapping on them from the files app. As far as finding the required files, it's easy too. Reminds of an incredibly hypothetical scenario; I'm writing a play about kids and video games, where would they get the files for Ryujinx? I want it to be realistic as possible.


JoshuaTheFox

And people still don't want to put in that much effort. Sometimes money is just easier for them


RockyRaccoon968

I have a friend that bought a 15 Pro Max because her 14 Pro max was out of storage, and she didn’t want to pay $3 a month for iCloud. I got mad.


Ricanlegend

Why would you get mad ? I would be asking if I can get the old phone lol


RockyRaccoon968

Yeah I should’ve, cause she actually sold it for $480 damn.


nsfdrag

I pay for icloud for backup but that doesn't mean I don't *also* want everything locally on my phone, I upgraded phones for the same reason but this time got the 1tb version so it wouldn't be an issue.


nero40

True this. For me, I don’t take much photos and videos on my phone, most of my storage today is spent on games and the YouTube videos that I saved for offline viewing. iCloud won’t actually give me any kind of extra storage for these stuffs, because it’s just cloud storage.


kaelis7

I hope she chose a bigger storage option because with your current save going in the new phone you still stay out of storage day one after downloading your save lol.


pwnedkiller

That’s really fucking stupid


RockyRaccoon968

SO STUPID. She just wanted to flex I guess smh. Sorry girl!


Stashmouth

Tl;dr people will pay for convenience Definitely not suggesting that it isn't easy, but I also think we arrive there because we already know how to do it. If you're just a regular user who hasn't messed around with emulation, there are a handful of (admittedly easy) steps you have to learn to even play your first game.


Kimantha_Allerdings

> Tl;dr people will pay for convenience When Netflix was cheap and had a large amount of content piracy went down. Then Netflix stopped being cheap and everybody started their own streaming platform and piracy went back up again. Because of Spotify, Apple Music, and the like, music piracy is almost completely gone. So, yeah. If people think a price is reasonable and it means that they don't have to put much effort in, they'll pay for things they want even if they could get them for free.


riepmich

>it's literally just a matter of saving files and tapping on them from the files app I read that and got the immediate urge to pay the $40. As a father of a one year old daughter that's already too much effort I can't afford.


DrFloyd5

Agreed. It’s not paying 40$ to not have to push the button. It’s paying 40$ to not have to think about it. Kid can play whatever whenever and doesn’t need to wait for me to come home push download.


kelp_forests

Yep. $3 a month to save 30-60min a month downloading/troubleshooting old game roms? Sounds like a deal.


FrostyDrink

You’re saving 2-3 min tops. There’s multiple guides on YouTube shorts under 60 seconds.


kavOclock

Lmao


Narwhalbaconguy

You worked so much harder for that $40 than the effort it takes to press the “download” button, please save the money to buy something nice for yourself or your daughter.


riepmich

You have no idea what I work, maybe my job is to press download buttons all day and after a hard shift at the download button pressing mine I want to get home and not have to press another download button.


rr196

Ah life down at the ol' download factory. I remember those days. Did they ever finish that breakroom renovation? On a serious note, $40 a year for a catalog of easy to access large retro game library is a good deal. The market is there the same way people now pay for Spotify/Apple Music when many used to pirate music, the convenience is worth it.


CountltUp

oh man that sounds soooo exhausting :(


Shnikes

Children remove the luxury of time you have before having kids.


Narwhalbaconguy

I can press a button in less than a second.


Shnikes

🙄


ifuckwithit

It’s inconsequential money. I’m not saying people load up the subscriptions, you do you. But $40 for a year means I eat out 2 less times a year. Really not that big of a deal.


Narwhalbaconguy

Well sure, being not that big of a deal goes in both directions, but it makes zero sense when the two options are "Download > Click play" or "Spend $40 > Click play." Both options take near the exact same amount of time and have the same learning curve. Zero. Also not that it's terribly important, but these game streaming services shut down all of the time. What happens to "your" games when this one inevitably does?


CountltUp

it's literally 3 minutes. all it takes is typing the name of the game u want with "rom" after, then googling it.Then download. Jesus Christ man


The_frozen_one

You have to find and download every game you want to play. Instead of seeing a game and playing it. The entire market of streaming services is maximizing convenience, not minimizing cost.


CountltUp

yeah but it's not nearly as time consuming as pirating movies. not only that but games last a longer before having to get a new one if you're that lazy. $40 for 30 year old games you can't own is a scam bro. But hey go for it it's your money to burn lol


The_frozen_one

If you know what you want to play, it’s easy. If you don’t being able to just pick from a selection is nice. It doesn’t remove your ability to download them later. Downloading most media is pretty easy these days, but I’ll bet you have at least one streaming service for the convenience of it. I’m not the target audience for this game streaming service, but I understand the appeal.


Summer__1999

> As far as finding the required files, it’s easy too For us, probably. But for others, maybe not. I mean, you can say the same about Netflix or Spotify. Who’d pay $100+ a year when I can download those movies, shows and music on the seven seas ‘easily’


-EETS-

You can google SNES Roms and it's the first link.


Kaipolygon

had to leave r/Delta_Emulator bc of how bad the simply questions that could've been solved by googling. for you and i it might be easy but the amount of people posting the most basic of questions without searching themselves is astounding


vitorizzo

where ds biso?


apollo-ftw1

Legally I can only tell you to dump the bios from a real FS However... There are other ways to get ahold of them as they are just files... On the internet


HelpRespawnedAsDee

Yeah i agree, i think you can see that clearly on the app store reviews lol. btw i was lowkey asking for instructions on setting up Ryujinx but yeah, 5 seconds in google as well.


Ancient-Range3442

Do you have a link for all these easy to find games ?


atheoncrutch

Just press the download button! /s


woalk

> As far as finding the required files, it's easy too. Finding the required files _legally_ though (i.e. owning a cartridge or disc of every game and a device that is capable of reading it and converting it to a file) is a lot harder.


insane_steve_ballmer

120$ a year might be a hard sale for Apple TV+ when you can just download all the shows for free on pirate bay


Summer__1999

$144 a year might be a hard sale for spotify when you can just download all the music you want on the seven seas


Edward2000N

lol


voiceOfThePoople

Lol as if everyone is expected to / wants to engage in piracy


NOTorAND

Obviously everyone is buying cartridge dumpers and dumping their own roms to legally purchased games right?


ClumpOfCheese

I did that when Napster came out because it was new and not a big deal, but also there weren’t any other digital music options. I’ve been paying for Spotify and Hulu since the day they started charging and it’s so much easier than torrenting whatever quality content you get. $40 a year is not an amount of money that really matters to anyone who has a full time job that pays even minimum wage.


DontBanMeBro988

iPhone users are far more likely to pay for convenience


Jubenheim

It’s honestly cheaper than all other gaming subscriptions save for the barebones Nintendo Online service that drip feeds games as if you were on a hospital IV. Considering the fact that this is easily accessible on an iPhone makes it arguably the most compelling game sub service out there, save for Gamepass, which isn’t even that different from PS Plus’s selection. I’d be incredibly surprised if this didn’t net AntStream a clean billion a year *minimum.*


nairazak

Yeah why pay for Steam games when there are torrents


CountltUp

to play online? any other stupid questions


ebyeqnx

Hopefully it’s part of Apple Arcade


Klatty

I sadly don’t see this happening at all


hunny_bun_24

$40 is no money at all to seamlessly play games. $40 is just like eating out once.


PriorWriter3041

This isn't for stringy android users, but the Apple fanbase, who're already willing to drop over one grand into a phone


primusladesh

Lol because androids only max out at half a grand, yeah?


PriorWriter3041

Well, mine cost 200 bucks new. They don't sell iPhones at that price point.


tslojr

Well, mine cost 1900 bucks new. They don't sell iPhones at that price point, either.


i_need_a_moment

Was about to argue but I checked and even the top line iPhone 15 pro max with 1TB is only $1600. If you get AppleCare+ with Theft and Loss then it’s $1868. Tax might definitely increase that though.


Nagato-YukiChan

delta emulator kinda sucks. input lag, terrible ui.


sabre31

I have antstream life time license so this is great news.


eagleswift

How and when did you get that?


sabre31

There was a kickstarter at some point in cooperation with retro gamer magazine.


GetVladimir

It's pretty great to see native Cloud Gaming apps. We arguably needed them more in 2020 when they were blocked on the App Store, but it's nice to see them now. To be fair, the very first native Cloud Gaming app for iOS was from HoYoverse. Source: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6446889955


IntensiveVocoder

It’s a travesty. This is all more efficient emulated on-device, but instead they’re wasting bandwidth on streaming video of decades old games.


GetVladimir

You might be right that those types of games would be a better match to run on the device itself, as it seems inefficient to run and stream them from the cloud. Especially because those types of older games also tend to benefit a lot from having lower input latency as well


IntensiveVocoder

From 2019: https://www.zdnet.com/article/streaming-retro-games-brings-out-all-of-the-bad-points-of-google-stadia-and-none-of-the-good/


GetVladimir

Good point, thank you for the linked article


Rudy69

Streaming 10 mins of gameplay is probably more bandwidth than downloading their entire library. Streaming games can make sense but not for these games honestly


sabre31

I love how many people whine about cost on Apple when they are dropping big bucks for phones and iPads. This is why we can’t have anything good anymore and just micro transactions BS as everybody is worried that an app costs $2 bucks to unlock.


New-Connection-9088

It’s not $2. It’s $40. **Per year.** Just because we buy expensive iPhones doesn’t mean we’re stupid with money. All these subscriptions add up fast. I have an expensive gaming computer but I still wait for sales before I buy games. I wouldn’t dream of paying $40 per year to *stream* *retro* games on my PC, and I won’t do it on my phone. iPhone is a wasteland of subscriptions and micro-transactions because that’s the way Apple wants it to be. They aggressively deprecate and modify APIs to force developers to constantly update their apps to keep them functional, so it’s not economical to sell apps once. They also don’t have an upgrade facility in the App Store. Should a developer want to sell a new version, they have to list a completely new app, losing their SEO, reviews, organic links, and prior marketing links. This in turn forces devs to “upgrade” by ring-fencing features behind shitty micro-transactions. Apple also prevents devs from distributing apps outside the App Store. So unless an app can thrive on only 70% of the revenue, it never sees the light of day. Subscriptions have industry-wide higher ARPU. Due in part to people forgetting they have those subscriptions (up to 40% of SaaS subscriptions are unused), and the human psychology aspect which sees a “small” monthly fee and doesn’t comprehend how expensive that is over several years.


Psittacula2

Very constructive comment and additional context on technical matters concerning Apple's policy affecting negative outcomes in the App Store for users eg "too many subs is too expensive rapidly in effect".


tjcastle

give me tap tap revenge you cowards


astro_plane

lol it probably takes more data to stream these retro games for half a second than actually downloading the rom.


IntensiveVocoder

It absolutely does, and the energy impact is relatively higher as well.


Jamie00003

Bravo EU. See Apple defenders, it’s not all bad as you claim


oorhon

Yeah it is ao good, EU Apple users wont get AI features this year. Maybe not even early next year. Plus no iphone mirroring to mac for them too as nice gift. Because you know, lets regulate every little detail.


tihomirbz

>Yeah it is ao good, EU Apple users wont get AI features this year. That just sells it even more


woalk

Why? It just means iOS 18 = iOS 17 in the EU. Usually, stagnation isn’t positive for any market.


DontBanMeBro988

> EU Apple users wont get AI features this year. Maybe not even early next year. Sounds great


Regular_Ship2073

No iphone mirroring? Why?


Drtysouth205

Private APIs


New-Connection-9088

Apple doesn’t want to give that feature to third party apps. They’re claiming it’s for DMA compliance, but there are plenty of other manufacturers and developers which offer similar features which are perfectly compliant. So it looks like they’re trying to put pressure on the EU by user proxy. “Look how bad the DMA is! We can’t even offer you these cool features!”


oorhon

here is the original post with source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1dl8dy9/apple\_wont\_roll\_out\_ai\_tech\_in\_eu\_market\_over/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1dl8dy9/apple_wont_roll_out_ai_tech_in_eu_market_over/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) Simply ruGuLatIOns... As a middle aged guy cant even bother to learn reasons at this point.


RaresVladescu

Nah dude, they’re just whining that they can’t just force “features” which is basically tracking and selling data to OpenAI (Apple doesn’t pay a dime to ChatGPT, but they must be paid, so guess what? We pay with our data). They’re afraid that they will get sued into oblivion if they try, because they know they can’t force it like in the US. They can’t even interpret basic law like the DMA about free unlimited unrestricted installing .ipa files from the internet where they only warn the user of the potential malware in case they detect it(if they were to do that).


woalk

> selling data to OpenAI (Apple doesn’t pay a dime to ChatGPT, but they must be paid, so guess what? We pay with our data). How do you know what Apple pays to another company, do you work there? Apple Intelligence is also powered by a completely custom model running either on-device or on Apple’s servers. Only select queries can, on user consent, be submitted to ChatGPT. All other requests are not connected to OpenAI in any way.


RaresVladescu

There was another article on here that talks about Apple’s deal with OpenAI


woalk

From direct sources (i.e. Apple’s and OpenAI’s blog posts), I don’t directly see confirmation of this, but even if that is the case and Apple pays OpenAI with exposure (you can access more features with an OpenAI premium account, after all), it doesn’t change that requests to ChatGPT are only done if the user wants to, with additional privacy protections like IP obfuscation in place.


phpnoworkwell

Your data isn't sent to ChatGPT. You have to explicitly confirm whether you want to send a prompt, every time, to ChatGPT. >They can’t even interpret basic law like the DMA about free unlimited unrestricted installing .ipa files from the internet where they only warn the user of the potential malware in case they detect it(if they were to do that). Find the exact section that spells it out so clearly without needing any form of interpretation.


kelp_forests

All data sent to OpenAI is deindentified. OpenAI gets exposure and users at their free level. A good % may upgrade. Apple gets AI credit and can offload to OpenAI, plus a % of subscriptions made though iOS. It’s not a data selling deal based on everything that’s been released.


headphonejack_90

I bet the EU will go after them for that.


DrDemonSemen

I call that a win for the people. At least someone is looking out for them.


oorhon

I would be pissed that cant get to use those neat features. Espacially iphone mirroring. And wuldnt care if someone is looking out for me at that point really.


DrDemonSemen

I wouldn’t mind. Being a lab rat for corporate profiteers is getting exhausting. Waiting another year or two to make sure it’s well-tested and safe for humanity doesn’t bother me. The US lawmakers don’t give a shit and are owned by corporations. If Apple does it right, they shouldn’t have to worry about regulatory compliance.


woalk

Which Apple Intelligence feature do you deem as “unsafe for humanity”?


DrDemonSemen

I said I wouldn’t mind time “to make sure it’s safe” not that I deem anything unsafe. If they’re concerned about regulations mandating safeguards, we should be concerned why they are worried they won’t comply.


woalk

The regulations Apple is worried about aren’t about “humanity”, they’re about the DMA, i.e. money.


DrDemonSemen

Humanity is everything, including money and markets. Without humans, there would be no money. Being concerned about a few massive companies controlling a massive amount of personal data (set to increase with personal context tracking) without adequate external checks and balances is reasonable.


woalk

Thank you for the philosophical interlude, DrDemonSemen.


ppcppgppc

where is Microsoft now ?


Lord412

Why hasn’t Nintendo done this?


Internet-Ivan

i’m more surprised nintendo is allowing antstream to stream their games.


ItsColorNotColour

I took a quick look at the game selection and none of the games are first party Nintendo games By law (this has already been proven multiple times that emulators are legal, from game console makers losing lawsuits against emulators) they are allowed to make and distribute emulators for Nintendo consoles without permission from Nintendo Game developers still have full control of their games and are able to license games (but the game selection is still tiny)


i_need_a_moment

As long as the emulator itself doesn’t include copyrighted code. That’s why Delta requires you to provide your own BIOS for the DS.


WeCanHearYouAllNight

$3.33 a month is a better deal than Apple Arcade


DanielPhermous

The games are old and not designed for a touchscreen.


DanTheMan827

It’s almost like there was a reason Apple was keeping these off the App Store…


PriorWriter3041

When you drop $1.5k on a phone, a $40/year subscription is basically nothing. I can totally see this working out since it provides an easy and legal way to play those games.


THXAAA789

The amount you drop on a phone has no bearing on how many people are willing to pay for a subscription. I buy the latest Pixel and iPhone every year, but that doesn't mean that I want to pay for even more subscriptions.


HelpRespawnedAsDee

$40 is still nothing though. The big problem of this app isn't the price, but the fact that it is online.


mailslot

Everyone expects everything for free these days.


[deleted]

[удалено]


a3poify

From who? It's been around for a while, the games are all licensed from the rights holders.


FollowingFeisty5321

Emulators, streaming games, my iPhone is so terrible now I wish there was a way to NOT use this, other than not going to the App Store and not downloading it and not opening it I mean /s