In-car gamming in Tesla was introduced in 2019 with the port of Cuphead. The number of games available has increased since then and now Elon Musk says that Tesla-compatible games will have tens of thousands of titles available through Steam games. It was unofficially announced as Elon Musk tweeted in a thread stating admiration for CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077, a game which was doomed previously for running on an infotainment system in Model S Plaid.
Musk stated, “We’re working through the general case of making Steam games work on Tesla vs specific titles. Former is obviously when we should be long-term.”
It may seem like an odd fit that a car’s infotainment center has high-end games. But Tesla vehicles have known to have long sported high-end graphics cards at the core of their media control units and Electronic Control Units that are used to power the car’s autopilot self-driving systems.
Last June in a conference, AMD CEO Lisa Su stated that the company is working with Tesla to provide Ryzen APUs. Also “a discrete RDNA2-based GPU that kicks in when running AAA games, providing up to 10 teraflops of computing power.”
Su added that “we look forward to giving gamers a great platform for AAA gaming,” a statement that takes on new meaning in light of Musk’s tweet about Steam. Tesla Autopilot Analyst Dan James also tweeted back in May about an opportunity for “Linux game devs to work on something *extremely* exciting at Tesla!” Reading between the lines a bit, that could also be a reference to plans for integration with Steam and the Proton-powered Steam Play system that lets Windows-based games run on Linux platforms such as the Steam Deck (and Tesla cars).
Tesla arcade games
While the feature to have Steams games in Tesla vehicles would be fun for and new. There are times when Musk stated various such innovations or developments and it didn’t work out that way. Sometimes it also happens that it takes years before it could actually happen. Last year, Musk stated about a Tesla restaurant, the company also patented for a restaurant. However, it has not started anywhere, even if it did there were ample changes being made.