Tesla Adds Steam Game Support to Its Newest Vehicles

The most recent models of Tesla's electric automobiles are now powered by steam. Obviously, this means that the vehicles' central consoles can now access and play tens of thousands of games through Valve's popular Steam platform. The new feature, part of Tesla's 2022.44.25.1 "Christmas update," is now only accessible on Model S and X vehicles with 16GB of onboard RAM that Tesla introduced in 2022. (though CEO and founder Elon Musk promised in a tweet that a "retrofit" will be available for older models). According to the update's release notes, these cars should be able to run any game that has been Verified by Valve for the Steam Deck portable device. The current list of Verified games comprises more than 6,000 titles that operate on the Deck via SteamOS, with the majority employing a compatibility layer to allow Windows-coded games to function on the Arch Linux-based system. We anticipate that the far more extensive list of games listed as "Playable" on Steam Deck will also function in these Teslas, but users may experience special interface issues with such games.

You can play Cyberpunk, Elden Ring and 1000s of other games in your *car* with an epic sound system!! https://t.co/F25Qu6HJ63

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 14, 2022

Deck-verified games aim for a minimum of 30 frames per second on the Steam Deck's 7-inch, 1280x800-resolution display. In contrast, the 17-inch central console of the 2022 Teslas can handle a resolution of up to 2200 by 1300 pixels. In order to maximize the "10 teraflops of compute capability" that AMD claims for Tesla's Ryzen APUs, it may be necessary to change the settings of certain games. [caption id="attachment_71010" align="aligncenter" width="1600"] image credit- Mint[/caption] Musk tweeted on Tuesday night that Tesla's new Steam integration supports wireless Bluetooth controllers as well as mouse/keyboard setups. Additionally, users can download their cloud saves to the automobile in order to continue playing games from other devices.

The trip to the gaming car

Full Steam support in Teslas is the culmination of a journey that began in 2018 when Musk issued a call to game developers to create Tesla-based ports. Since then, Tesla's central console display has gained compatibility for a few dozen separately ported games, beginning in 2019 with Cuphead and extending to high-end titles such as The Witcher III: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077. A controversial feature that allowed supported games to run while the vehicle was in motion was included to a Tesla update last year. This action prompted a broad inquiry by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, prompting Tesla to reverse course and once again restrict gameplay to when the vehicle is parked. Musk foreshadowed a shift in Tesla's game porting strategy back in February, when he stated that the company was "working through the general case of having Steam games run on a Tesla as opposed to specific titles." Musk stated in July that the company was "making progress with Steam integration," which led to the Steam compatibility upgrade for late-model Teslas on Tuesday.