The world’s biggest Steam Deck — Tesla rolls out Steam game support for newest vehicle models Over 6,000 “Deck Verified” games are now playable on the 17-inch central console.
Kyle Orland – Dec 14, 2022 3:30 pm UTC Enlarge / Drive through the Lands Between in style…Aurich Lawson / Tesla / FromSoft reader comments 49 with 0 posters participating Share this story Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Reddit
The newest models of Tesla’s electric vehicles are now Steam-powered. And by that, of course, we mean the vehicles’ central consoles can now access and play thousands of titles from Valve’s popular Steam gaming platform.
The new addition, part of Tesla’s 2022.44.25.1 “holiday update,” is currently only available on the high-end “new” Model S and X vehicles Tesla released in 2022, each of which include 16GB of onboard RAM (though CEO and founder Elon Musk promised in a tweet that a “retrofit” will be available for older models). The release notes for the update suggest that those vehicles should be able to run any game that has been Verified by Valve for play on the company’s Steam Deck handheld.
Further ReadingHeres why some games arent verified for Steam Deck compatibilityThe list of Verified games currently includes over 6,000 titles that run on the Deck through SteamOS, most using a compatibility layer to get Windows-coded games running on the Arch Linux-based system. We imagine the even more expansive list of games listed as “Playable” on Steam Deck will also work in these Teslas, though users may run into some specific interface headaches with such titles.
Deck-verified games currently target a steady 30 fps minimum on the Steam Deck’s 7-inch, 1280800 resolution screen. The 2022 Teslas’ 17-inch central console, on the other hand, can support up to a 22001300 resolution. Thus, individual game settings may need to be tweaked a bit to get the most out of the “10 teraflops of compute power” AMD boasts for Tesla’s Ryzen APUs. Advertisement 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
Tesla’s new Steam integration supports wireless Bluetooth controllers and even mouse/keyboard setups, Musk tweeted Tuesday night. Users can also download their cloud saves to the car to pick up games played on other devices. The journey to a gaming car
Full-fledged Steam support in Teslas is the biggest step in a long journey that started when Musk put out a call to game developers for Tesla-based ports back in 2018. Since then, Tesla’s center console display has added support for a few dozen individually ported games, starting with Cuphead in 2019 and running through high-end titles like The Witcher III: Wild Hunt and Cyberpunk 2077 (the latter of which was used to show off Steam support in a promotional tweet).
Back in February, though, Musk indicated a change in Tesla’s game porting strategy, saying the company was “working through the general case of making Steam games work on a Tesla vs specific titles.” Musk said in July that the company was “making progress with Steam integration,” leading to Tuesday’s Steam support update on late-model Teslas.
Further ReadingYou can now play video games on a Tesla screen when the car is in motionLast year, a Tesla update added a controversial feature that let supported games run even while the car was in motion. That move sparked a wide-ranging investigation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which caused Tesla to backtrack and once again limit gameplay to when the vehicle is parked. reader comments 49 with 0 posters participating Share this story Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Reddit Kyle Orland Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Email [email protected] // Twitter @KyleOrl Advertisement Channel Ars Technica ← Previous story Related Stories Today on Ars
