New Tesla job listings spotted online have hinted the company’s growing interest in the world of video games. While we’ve already seen this merge start to happen with games like Stardew Valley, Fallout Shelter and Cuphead being ported to Tesla’s in-car display system, these jobs indicate first party games development may be in the company’s sights.
Jobs listed include a software engineer specialising in mobile, another engineer position specialising in Vehicle User Interface (based in C++) as well as a rendering engineer and video games engineer both specialising in ‘software infotainment’. These listings were first noticed by EV news site Electrek, which noted the jobs were closely tied to gaming software, rather than hardware.
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‘Infotainment’ may relate to an original Tesla-themed game, but the term can be widely applied to any kind of educational game.
The need for a Vehicle User Interface engineer also suggests Tesla may be doubling down on its existing Tesla Arcade infrastructure which enables users to use their vehicle’s wheels and pedals to control in-game action.
Racing game Beach Buggy Racing 2 was one of the first games to get this treatment and recieved positive feedback from those who tried it.
Given the job listing descriptions, it’s likely these positions are designed for creating new games in the same vein:
Tesla strives to make its cars the most fun possible; bringing video game experiences to the car helps increase that fun. In this incredibly rare opportunity to help build a video games platform, we are looking for a highly motivated software engineer to help enable the best video game content to be available in-car.
It’s also possible these positions would be responsible for porting popular titles over to Tesla’s system.
Recently, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken to Twitter to suggest ports of both Minecraft and Pokémon Go for Tesla vehicles and while it’s unclear whether the company’s been granted the license for these games thus far, there’s still the possiblity they’ll release on whatever system Tesla is working on (whether it’s a new version of Tesla Arcade or an improvement on the original).
Anyone think they can get a good multiplayer Minecraft working on Teslas? Or maybe create a game that interacts virtually with reality like Pokémon Go while driving safely? Like a complex version of Pac-man or Mario Kart?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 3, 2020
While Musk’s ideas for real-life video game interaction present a massive safety risk for drivers, they are intriguing ideas for the future of tech well worth investigating. As technology becomes more complex and integrated with our daily lives, video games becoming more engaging is a logical next step.
Whatever the outcome, expect to see Tesla actively pursuing its foray into the world of video games over the coming years.