Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla is still working on bringing Steam to its vehicles, and a demo may be out sooner than expected.
Elon Musk is pretty well known for his statements, whether it revolves around Tesla, SpaceX, or any of the topics on Musk’s Twitter account. The words this billionaire say are not always reliable, but sometimes just for fun. Announcement that the PC game store Steam is coming to Teslas is one of those weird claims that everyone thought was a joke. However, Musk does not seem to be joking about the possibility of Steam integration on Tesla cars. He even said that Steam on Tesla might be coming soon.
Last week, the Tesla Owners Community Twitter account in Silicon Valley posted an article about gaming in Teslas. The post includes a short video showing how a Tesla Model X owner plays different games on the screen of his Tesla car. He even connected a PlayStation 4 DualShock controller to play Cuphead. Elon Musk then responded to the post on Twitter and provided an update on the status of Steam’s rollout to the Tesla model.
Musk’s brief response first confirms that Tesla is still working on bringing the Steam store to Tesla and is “making progress”. This is a vague statement, but much to be expected. However, Musk also said that a demo “probably” will be made available next month. In other words, Steam or a test version of Steam could launch for Tesla drivers as soon as August.
The definition of “demo” has many meanings in Musk’s Twitter post. The billionaire may be referring to a Steam version that doesn’t actually play any games, just to test how the software runs on Tesla cars. It can also mean that a single game will be playable or something small like that just for testing purposes. Or he could be implying that a more substantial Steam beta is coming to Tesla, but only rolling out certain drivers to begin with.
Not only does Musk’s definition of “demo” leave a lot of possibilities, but the word “probably” leaves open the possibility that this feature won’t be available anytime soon. Musk tends to commit to releasing things too soon, or even, as happens with Twitter, to rescind those commitments altogether.
If Steam can run on a small portable PC like the Steam Deck, there’s really no reason why it can’t run on Tesla cars. However, that doesn’t mean Teslas will care and optimize for titles like the Steam Deck. And there will certainly be controversy, if not opposition, regarding Valve’s move to bring its gaming platform to life. Valve probably wouldn’t want to see articles about traffic accidents that happened while the Tesla driver was playing a game on Steam. Either way, it looks like we’ll have more Steam news on Tesla cars soon.
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