Tesla launches Steam game support for its newest car models

Steam-powered technology now powers Tesla’s most recent electric vehicle models. Naturally, what we mean by that is that the central consoles of the vehicles can now access and play thousands of games from Valve’s well-known Steam gaming platform.

The new expansion, part of Tesla’s 2022.44.25.1 “occasion update,” is as of now just accessible on the top of the line “new” Model S and X vehicles Tesla delivered in 2022, every one of which incorporates 16GB of installed Slam (however Chief and pioneer Elon Musk guaranteed in a tweet that a “retrofit” will be accessible for more established models). According to the update’s release notes, those automobiles ought to be able to play any game that has been verified by Valve for the Steam Deck handheld.

Over 6,000 games that run on the Deck with SteamOS are on the list of Verified games. Most of them use a compatibility layer to run Windows-coded games on the Arch Linux system. We anticipate that the even broader selection of Steam Deck games marked as “Playable” will also function on these Teslas, though users may encounter particular interface issues with these titles.

On the Steam Deck’s 7-inch, 1280 x 800-resolution screen, Deck-verified games currently aim for a steady 30 frames per second minimum. On the other hand, the 17-inch central console on the 2022 Tesla can handle resolutions up to 2200 x 1300. As a result, in order to get the most out of AMD’s claim that Tesla’s Ryzen APUs have “10 teraflops of compute power,” individual game settings may need to be adjusted slightly.

Musk tweeted Tuesday night that Tesla’s new Steam integration is compatible with wireless Bluetooth controllers and even mouse/keyboard configurations. In addition, users can access games played on other devices by downloading their cloud saves to the vehicle.

The biggest step on the long road to a gaming car with full Steam support in Teslas is when Musk called for game developers to make Tesla-based ports in 2018. From that point forward, Tesla’s mid control area show has added help for a couple dozen exclusively ported games, beginning with Cuphead in 2019 and going through top of the line titles like The Witcher III: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077, the latter of which was utilized in a promotional tweet to demonstrate Steam support.

However, Tesla’s game porting strategy may have changed, as Musk stated in February that the company was “working through the general case of making Steam games work on a Tesla vs specific titles.” In July, Musk stated that the company was “making progress with Steam integration,” which led to the Tuesday Steam support update for Teslas of later models.

A contentious feature that allowed supported games to run even while the vehicle was moving was added in a Tesla update last year. As a result of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s extensive investigation, Tesla reversed course and once more limited gameplay to parked vehicles.