‘Holiday Update’ Finally Brings Steam to Certain Tesla Vehicles

Owners of certain Teslas can now run Steam games inside their vehicles.

On Tuesday, Tesla rolled out a “holiday update” for the electric cars that includes integration with the Steam marketplace, best known for selling PC games. 

In a video(Opens in a new window), the company showed off the feature by running Cyberpunk 2077 on the vehicle’s touch-screen display, which can connect to a Bluetooth controller. 

Steam is here—bringing thousands of games to new Model S & X vehicles 🎮 pic.twitter.com/PDzjtefv7A(Opens in a new window)

— Tesla (@Tesla) December 13, 2022(Opens in a new window)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been teasing the Steam integration for months now. However, the Steam marketplace is only available on “new Model S and X vehicles,” according to the company’s announcement. 

The holiday update release notes(Opens in a new window) add: “This feature is available on Model S and X (year 2022+) with 16GB DDR memory, and requires Premium Connectivity,” which costs $9.99 per month. 

Model S and X vehicles can run Steam due to their AMD Ryzen processors, which come with a built-in GPU. However the cars don’t run the Windows version of Steam. Instead, the release notes suggest the company is rolling out the Linux-based version found on the Steam Deck.  

As a result, the Steam integration is designed to run games that’ve been verified for the Steam Deck. The release notes add: “With Steam’s cloud synchronization, resume your game from your Tesla or any Steam device. To access Steam, tap the Application Launcher > Arcade.”

The holiday update also includes integration with the video-conferencing app Zoom and Apple Music while featuring a new “Dog mode(Opens in a new window)” that lets owners access the Tesla’s cabin camera to keep tabs on a pet inside while they’re away from their cars.

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