As you probably know, Teslas can run videogames, and soon they’ll be able to run games from Steam.
Every part of this article has me letting out an exasperated “Why, though?”. The most popular PC gaming store, Steam, is coming to your Tesla. Eventually.
We wrote about this announcement back in February, but now the beta is just around the corner, according to Elon Musk himself.
We’re making progress with Steam integration. Demo probably next month.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2022
Teslas currently have gaming integration through Tesla Arcade, with a few games ported to the car gaming system, such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Fallout Shelter and Cuphead. You know, just the basics of what a car should need. No, you can’t play any of them while driving.
In January 2021, Musk said that games like The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 would eventually make their way to the Tesla, but they still haven’t been ported over. Keep in mind, though, that these are massive games.
But of course, Steam access will increase the games available to Tesla drivers by quite a lot. Steam has thousands of games, from small sidescrollers to gigantic open-world RPGs. I’m sure everyone in the world has been wanting to play Team Fortress 2 from the comfort of an electric car, but we’ll need to wait until at least August for the demo to be released.
Additionally, remember that The Model S and Model X are the only cars with high-level gaming specs, packed with “PS5-level performance”. Model 3 and Model Y buyers will, quite unfortunately, have a less powerful system. I’m sure this is a travesty to everyone.
Tesla Model S, X gaming specs
I’ll say it again, I can’t really believe I’m writing this about a car.
But, well, here we are. The gaming systems of the Tesla Model S and Model X are powered by AMD, with 16GB GDDR6 RAM, a Ryzen processor and a Radeon 6600M RDNA 2 GPU.
They’re gaming laptop-level specs, while the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y don’t include specs optimised for gaming (they’re built for the boring car stuff like, you know, driving).
Now that is powerful. Short of being next-gen console powerful, but I’m hesitant to say that anyone cares.
Would you play Steam games in a Tesla?
I’m sure everyone is very excited to play Steam games in their $100,000+ cars (the Model S starts at $147,990 and the Model X starts at $165,990).
Me? I don’t know, I just want to be able to afford an EV in my lifetime.
Musk says that the Steam integration demo will probably be out “next month”.
If you’re interested in other EVs, here’s a list of all the new ones.