News

BMW to follow Tesla's lead and launch AirConsole service with car games as early as 2023

BMW Group has partnered with AirConsole to launch casual gaming in its vehicles next year. To use the cloud gaming service in cars, you don’t need to connect game controllers – all functions will be taken over by a regular smartphone.

BMW Group says the AirConsole's gaming integration will work seamlessly with the car's curved display, providing an immersive and modern gaming experience.

“With the AirConsole, we will use innovative technology combined with a wide range of fun and multiplayer games. This will make waiting in the car (e.g. while charging) much more enjoyable,” said Stefan Dyurac from the BMW Group.

Indeed, the emergence of electric vehicles on the market has created new questions—for example, what to do while the car is charging. While improvements in infrastructure and advances in battery technology have shortened the charging process by several minutes, there’s still plenty of time to kill, so drivers and passengers are relying on automakers to come up with creative solutions.

Gaming has long been available on Tesla’s electric vehicles, but the company has recently stepped up its game. Last year, at the launch of the Model S Plaid, the company announced that the electric vehicles will now feature some of the world’s best processors and gaming technology. Additionally, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company had “made progress on Steam integration” and promised to showcase it in the coming months (which it didn’t). Steam is compatible with Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android, and games like Apex Legends, PUBG, and Counter-Strike all run on the platform.

BMW is apparently preparing to do the same by integrating the AirConsole into its vehicles. Anthony Clicquot, CEO of N-Dream, the company that developed the AirConsole, said that in-car entertainment is being revolutionized and BMW's engineering is best suited to do it.

“We are proud to launch in-car gaming with BMW and are excited to create new products for this type of entertainment. The ingenious architecture combined with the ease of access of our platform will change people’s in-car entertainment,” said Clicquot.

The whole process is simple and streamlined: players simply need to scan the QR code on the car with their smartphone and complete the connection. The smartphone will then act as a controller, with BMW’s curved screen serving as the gaming monitor.

BMW seguirá a liderança da Tesla e lançará o serviço AirConsole com jogos de carros já em 2023

The AirConsole delivers games over the internet and has a library of over 180 games available on the PC version — but there are no more well-known titles here. By comparison, Tesla’s infotainment system has had a growing library of preloaded games since 2019, starting with Cuphead and Beach Buggy Racing 2, and then adding others like Sonic the Hedgehog and Stardew Valley. Musk also promised that high-end PC games like Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 would come to the new Model S and Model X vehicles equipped with AMD’s RDNA 2 discrete GPU.

Commenting on The Verge, publicist Bilal Mahmood said that AirConsole will first appear in the new BMW 7 Series, as it is the only current car from the automaker capable of running games. This indicates that some modern cars with the new curved display, such as the iX XDrive 50, will not receive games via over-the-air, but the possibility of a hardware upgrade is not ruled out.

With more vehicles getting massive screens, you can expect more automakers to follow the path Tesla has already taken. While handheld devices like the Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck support 3D gaming and a fair amount of cloud gaming services, it's hard to imagine anyone picking up a humble Smash Bros. clone just because it's built into their BMW.

Recall that Tesla previously added the Passenger Play feature, which allowed drivers to play games while the car was in motion. In the face of criticism from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Tesla abandoned this innovation.