Elon Musk Teases Upcoming Steam PC Game Demo for Teslas
Tesla is apparently making headway in bringing the Steam gaming platform to its vehicles.
"We’re making progress with Steam integration. Demo probably next month," Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted(Opens in a new window) on Friday. Tesla's annual shareholders meeting is on Aug. 4, so it's possible Musk will show off the Steam gaming demo during the event, which will be livestreamed(Opens in a new window).
Musk mentioned the Steam integration in February amid Tesla’s efforts to turn the company’s electric cars into gaming powerhouses. The latest Tesla vehicles, including the “Plaid” Model S and new versions of the Model 3 and Y, feature AMD Ryzen processors with a built-in GPU.
As a result, the infotainment systems inside the cars have enough processing power to run high-end games. Musk initially demonstrated this capability when he showed Cyberpunk 2077 running inside a Model S last year.
The latest Tesla vehicles already have a growing collection of games customers can play, although Cyberpunk 2077 and the Witcher 3 have yet to officially arrive. However, the Steam integration promises to take the gaming to the next level, enabling Tesla owners to download and run any PC games they already own on their Steam accounts.
The main challenge facing the company in adding Steam seems to be software compatibility since Tesla’s infotainment system runs on Linux as opposed to Windows. Back in December, Musk tweeted(Opens in a new window): “Lot of internal debate as to whether we should be putting effort towards generalized gaming emulation vs making individual games work well.”
To get around this obstacle, Tesla may be using the Proton software from Steam developer Valve, which can help Steam PC games run on Linux systems. Proton
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