Tesla’s holiday update only adds Steam gaming if your hardware can handle it

Steam, the Pc gaming system, is generating its way around city as component of Tesla’s hottest vacation update. It fulfills a promise Tesla CEO Elon Musk built just about two a long time in the past: that you’ll be in a position to engage in The Witcher 3 applying the car’s created-in hardware. But however for me, I will not get to play it, and it doesn’t seem like there will be any straightforward path towards upgrading.

I have a 2018 Tesla Design 3, and I feel I should really point out it’s acquired a lot of upgrades in excess of the a long time, like overhauled user interface, Autopilot visualizations, streaming apps, and arcade online games. But in my vehicle, all of Tesla’s extravagant new software program is running on the Intel Atom — a processor built for low cost netbooks from the previous 10 years (Try to remember the Eee Personal computer?). So it’s no shock that my Product 3 just cannot play Steam online games, but I even now wish it could.

Assistance for Computer games from Steam, nonetheless, is reserved for the most recent Product S and X cars, ones that expense about twice, if not extra, than what I compensated for my 3 (even with the most current special discounts).

And we’re talking about only the most up-to-date of the 2022 designs, as redesigned S and X vehicles from 2021 and early 2022 consist of the “PS5-level” graphics chips dependent on AMD RDNA2 but really don’t have the necessary 16GB of RAM.

Proprietors of individuals models may well not be fully screwed, however, as Musk confirmed on Twitter that there will be a retrofit made available.

The 2022 holiday getaway update from Tesla, like we see each yr, does add lots of neat new attributes that my Product 3 can get advantage of. The automaker uploaded a new video this 7 days highlighting Easter eggs like always-on rainbow highway graphics for Autopilot, the means to remotely check your pet while in pet dog manner, and, eventually, participate in Apple Music right in the automobile (thanks, Tim Prepare dinner?).

Of course, the vacation update arrives with a manufacturer-new holiday light present that can time up with other Teslas. Also, I recognize that Tesla brought again the swipe-able playing cards that conveniently show trip facts and tire force — that was taken out in past year’s introduction of software variation 11, among other head-scratchers like eradicating seat heater buttons from the bottom bar.

The video clip also features some technological details on what it can take for game titles like Cyberpunk 2077 to run at substantial graphics configurations in a Tesla. It employs a Linux digital equipment, Steam Deck confirmed video games, and of class, GPU acceleration from hardware I could only desire of acquiring in my vehicle.

Apparently, Design 3 and Y automobiles that commenced shipping this time previous calendar year arrived with some upgrades, much too, which includes new infotainment pcs running on AMD Ryzen chips. The new components, identified in Tesla community circles as MCU3, displays improved overall performance throughout the OS — but however, they really do not occur with discrete graphics essential to run quite a few useful resource-weighty video games available on Steam.

There’s also no official phrase regardless of whether more mature automobiles with the Intel-dependent MCU2 (like mine) can get a retrofit, which would be amazing given that apps I can run, like Netflix and the world-wide-web browser, are sensation increasingly sluggish at present.

Supporting the a lot more powerful AMD chipset could possibly even require the new Lithium-based mostly 12V battery that comes in the more recent Model 3 and Y, according to the founder of Tesla Entrepreneurs On line, a Tesla discussion board. And to make issues even worse, the skill to make in-motor vehicle Zoom phone calls might not even appear to the Intel Atom-based mostly Teslas.

So it is time for me to just take it: I’ll only be equipped to participate in online games like Stardew Valley, Sonic the Hedgehog (1991), and Cuphead in my Product 3 all through street trips (not whilst driving, just to be apparent), except I pack an genuine Steam Deck or gaming laptop computer. A person other alternative could come through this unofficial Xbox cloud gaming workaround, but it isn’t great.

While the update didn’t bring me Steam, it did at least get me Apple Songs — so I no for a longer period have to have to pay for Spotify to listen to audio instantly on my slow Intel Atom-driven monitor.