Tesla is now behind schedule with the integration of Steam, the huge video marketplace and library, but still plans to have the full video game library available in its electric vehicles as CEO Elon Musk tests it himself.
In recent years, Tesla has invested heavily in integrating video games into its in-car entertainment system, but it still surprised many when Tesla said earlier this year that it would go as far as Valve’s Steam, an online video game , to integrate store and distribution platform in its vehicles.
Steam offers a huge library of video games, and integrating it with Tesla’s electric vehicles would result in a massive increase in games playable in Tesla vehicles.
In July, CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla should release a Steam integration demo by August. However, Tesla appears behind schedule as the demo never came.
But the Steam integration is still in the plans for Tesla, as Musk confirmed he was testing it yesterday:
The CEO didn’t offer a new timeline for releasing integration with a Tesla software update.
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Tesla enters the video game business
As we previously reported, Tesla has a team of software engineers working on video games in Seattle, and they’ve recently started building a similar team in Austin. The automaker has built a video game platform called Tesla Arcade into its vehicles and has worked with video game studios to port games to it.
Right now it’s mostly about adding value to the ownership experience, but Tesla may have bigger plans for gaming in its vehicles. Musk recently hinted that he believes “entertainment will be critical when cars drive themselves,” which he believes Tesla can achieve within this year.
In preparation for this, the automaker has released more video games in its Tesla Arcade and hinted that it could turn it into a business. We’ve seen signs that Tesla plans to offer paid bundles of various video games in its vehicles, which would put the company in the same business as Valve’s Steam, PlayStation Store, and Xbox Live Store.
But it looks like Tesla is going for the Steam integration instead.
New gaming computer from Tesla
With the unveiling of the new Model S and Model X, Tesla has announced a new gaming computer in the vehicles:
With up to 10 teraflops of computing power, Tesla Arcade enables in-car gaming on par with today’s latest consoles. Wireless controller compatibility lets you play from anywhere.
A well-known chip leaker, Patrick Schur, posted a diagram from Tesla’s new gaming computer with AMD Navi 23 GPU:
The system is integrated and connects directly to two touchscreens in Model S and Model X to play games, view entertainment, and perform a few other functions.
Musk also revealed that the new computer has more storage space to handle more games simultaneously on the platform.
Website videocardz compared the specs to existing latest-gen consoles – showing that they’re actually a good match based on the specs available:
Tesla is expected to use this new hardware to expand its in-car video game experience.
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