Tesla has finally integrated Steam to its cars in one of the company's latest updates. The electric car company has been actively working to build its existing infotainment system in vehicles. Now with the Steam addition, Tesla owners have received a significant upgrade on the entertainment front.
Tesla's Steam integration was no secret. Back in February, Elon Musk indicated that he wanted to bring the game store on to Tesla vehicles. By July, Musk tweeted again about Steam stating that the integration is making progress and that a demo was to follow next month. Though Musk's announcement turned out to be a few months early, as is usually the case around the billionaire's announcements. Fast-forward to December, the company finally unveiled its Steam integration.
In a series of tweets, the electric car company offered details on its current holiday update. This included a promo video of Steam Beta running on Tesla's infotainment system with an indication that it would have the capacity to play even high-demanding titles like Cyberpunk 2077. The update is rolling out to newer Model S and X cars, which more likely translates to its Plaid versions. Incidentally, both these models ship with AMD's RDNA 2 GPUs, the same tech powering the PS5 and AMD Ryzen chips. Although it remains to be seen what game performance will really be like with Steam on Teslas.
Musk himself has claimed that Tesla is targeting performance on par with modern gaming consoles. Last year during a Tesla event, the company claimed that the Model S Plaid is looking at "PS5 level performance" doubling down on its recent efforts in building its gaming experience within vehicles. It should be noted that Tesla was already hiring developers for its in-car gaming platform since 2020. So if the recent Steam announcement is any indication, it's likely that Tesla is going to continue pushing for more gaming capabilities for its infotainment system.
That being said, the ability to play games in your car's own system hasn't gone unnoticed by authorities. Last year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation over Tesla's Passenger Play, a feature that allowed passengers to play games while a Tesla car is in motion. As a result of the investigation, the company ended up disabling the feature. Of course, a Steam integration alone wouldn't garner for any regulatory oversight. In any case, it will be interesting to see how Tesla will look to address authority concerns while actively looking to build an in-car system that goes on par with current-gen gaming consoles.