Why is a car capable of playing games in the first place. I understand it’s not going to allow people to play while they drive but still. That just seems like an odd/bad idea.
It's just a computer... Why not? As long as it cannot be running while the car is driving I don't particularly see an issue.
Would be great if I could fire up a game while waiting in cell parking at the airport for my family that comes into town for example. Gotta remember that this isn't new. We had minivans with built in n64s and shit before.
And don’t forget, depending on the charger, you could need to burn 15 to 45 min filling you battery up on a trip. The games and videos are primarily there to make the charging experience suck less.
Honestly I actually had not thought about people sitting around waiting to charge. In my area there are tons of chargers at task oriented locations. Almost all Grocery stores, Costco, the mall, movie theaters. My experience had been that people would charge while doing other things. Thanks for the insight into a good use for it.
Why not bring a Steam Deck or Switch along? Or just play on the phone in your pocket? Are people really spending so much time in their cars that it really needs conveniences like that?
I'm primarily a PC gamer... The only game on my phone is Bloons TD6. Which I open maybe once a month.
But why not use the computer that's literally in front of me rather than settling for the lesser experience?
Note: I should clarify, I don't have a Tesla and don't care for them at all. I just view this feature as probably one of the better ones.
How is bloons td6? I loved 4 and 5. Would be fine tossing some dollars at ninja kiwi if 6 is up to par. I've also seen it in Netflix and confused about how I feel about that.
Oh it's a decent time killer. I don't really do mobile games. I only did this one strictly because of the nostalgia (Original on library computers in high school sort of thing) and because it was on a sale. I haven't regretted the purchase and they don't make the in app purchases super necessary. Overall I'd give it a thumbs up. I don't do any of the multiplayer stuff either.
And I don't know anything about Netflix in regards to td6.. I did see that Mr.Beast did a sponsorship with them...
I have a steam deck, and while its somewhat portable, I wouldn't want to carry one just to use at a charging station, considering the alternative is a controller stashed away in the glovebox. Probably also would want to carry the deck whenever leaving the vehicle too, considering how common it is in certain regions for some tesla models to be broken into and boot emptied out (apparently preventable with a 3d printed shim).
With the crazy powerful GPUs in these cars IMO it's practically free to enable this functionality for the user when the car is stationary, on a screen that is much, much larger and with a nicer sound system compared to any handheld or phone
As long as it cannot be running while the car is driving
This is Tesla... So only as long as the state enforces it...
That’s a fair point. I honestly had not thought about the “waiting for” aspect.
Why a bad idea? Why an odd idea? It's a powerful computer with a decent size monitor in a place where sometimes people have to sit and wait. What am I missing because seems like a logical / good idea to me?
Honestly I actually had not thought about people sitting around waiting to charge. In my area there are tons of chargers, grocery store, Costco, the mall, movie theaters. My experience had been that people would charge while doing other things. Thanks for the insight into a good use for it.
Not even just waiting to charge. Picking someone up, but your schedule gets you there 15 minutes before they're available? Why not put that computer to use?
Electric cars have a very legit use case for this… extended charge times. The video games and streaming apps are so you can kill time.
Telsa’s have pretty fast charge times, but even those are slower than a gasoline fill up. Moreover, if you get cursed with charging at a non-Telsa station, you could be there for quite a bit.
A lot of people camp in them too.
Honestly I actually had not thought about people sitting around waiting to charge. In my area there are tons of chargers, grocery store, Costco, the mall, movie theaters. My experience had been that people would charge while doing other things. Thanks for the insight into a good use for it.
Yeah, sometimes you’re in BFE and there isn’t much around. Other times you just want to eat fast food in your car like an animal and watch a TV show that is too embarrassing to watch on the couch with your significant other.
People are so used to megacorporations controlling what specific software they can run on their general-purpose computers that they are now... in favor of it? Every day it seems more and more the case that Apple's anti-sideloading propaganda is successful.
I don't want a general-purpose computer in my car. I want a screen to do the federally-mandated backup camera and physical buttons for everything else.
Buying a Tesla would be a huge mistake then
As someone without an electric car, i always assumed it was for something to do while charging.
The cars already have decent GPUs to process the camera data for driving assistance features, so someone at the company probably just thought it would be neat to do something with that computing power when it's not being used for driving.
Wasn't it marketed as something to do while the car charges originally?
Because Elon is a child.
Do you mean to suggest that videogames are for children? I don't really see where you're coming from here.
No, nothing like that. I’m just calling Elon a petulant man-child.
I never wait around while the car is charging (generally only charge at home), but this has been useful for waiting to board a ferry, actually being in the car on a ferry, and waiting for road closures to clear.
I also do have a steam deck, and this is basically the same thing but with a bigger screen.
Probably similar to why you can make the turn indicator make fart noises or have the car "dance" by flashing lights and opening doors and such. The hardware is there so why not. Utterly pointless features but atleast it's something the competition isn't doing I guess.
Tho I must admit that it was quite funny when I once heard a guy lock the doors on his Tesla and instead of the generick "click click" it said "quack" instead.
TIL: Tesla is not powered by batteries. It's powered by steam. Lol.
Or coal. Usually coal.
Well howdya think they make the steam?
Geewiz I bought my my car to play Steam game!! /s
Perhaps not exclusively so, but it could've convinced some to choose a Tesla over other EV's.
I guess Musk hadn't yet fired enough people after closing their entire charging station division.
"lose steam"
In which way?
(For those that didn't get it, the joke is a double entendre.)
I found an article about it that has some details, you might find it interesting.
They're probably not interested in reading the article, but in case they care to read the title of the article you shared: New Teslas might lose Steam
It's literally the fist sentence of the article:
Tesla might be dropping Steam support
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Tesla’s message alerts the customer that the company is “updating the gaming computer” in the Model X and says it’s “no longer capable of playing Steam games.” The message ends with a button for the customer to confirm they will proceed with the delivery.
And we’re not seeing any signs that the automaker plans to remove Steam from current owners’ vehicles through a software update.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk had hyped Steam as a selling point, advertising the new GPU as powerful with the ability to play top-tier games like Cyberpunk 2077.
Initial 2021 models were not installed with sufficient RAM to support the advertised games, so Steam was not included.
There’s speculation that Tesla might be backtracking on powerful gaming hardware in new Model S and X vehicles.
Musk has been busy squeezing the company through hot-headed layoffs in an effort to make the company “absolutely hard core.” Tesla scaled back on what a new low-cost vehicle will look like and is going all in on building a robotaxi, which means games like The Witcher are no longer a priority.
The original article contains 323 words, the summary contains 181 words. Saved 44%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Oh no... anyway.
Whether my car can play games has no bearing on whether I'd buy that car. So, this is a nothingburger.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
