Blog Tesla Invites Consumers to Experience the Tesla Arcade

After Tesla recently announced plans to offer more gaming options for the entertainment systems available in its cars, the automaker said Tuesday it is inviting consumers to showrooms to “experience the new Tesla Arcade.”

The company also tweeted a teaser video for a new racing game, Beach Buggy Racing 2, that is controlled with the vehicle’s steering wheel when the car is parked.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1141041018835353600

Chief Executive Elon Musk recently said on Twitter that the company is working on porting the Unity and Unreal video game engines, which are among the most popular development platforms for games.

Musk first revealed Tesla’s efforts to bring games to its cars last August when he announced the “TeslaAtari,” which includes classic titles like Centipede, Asteroids, Missile Command, Super Breakout and 2048.

Check out Tesla’s invitation to “Experience the Arcade” below.

Experience the Tesla ArcadeGlobal Tesla ShowroomsJune 18 — June 30Bring your friends and family to a Tesla showroom to experience the new Tesla Arcade until June 30.Access the full library of games directly from the vehicle’s touchscreen to play gaming classics like Atari Missile Command and Asteroids – or experience our newest addition, Beach Buggy Racing 2, a kart racing game where you can careen, blast and launch your way through 22 tracks. Players can recruit new drivers (see if you can find our favorite) and use the steering wheel controls for the most immersive gaming experience.If you’re interested in stopping by, kindly RSVP and visit a store near you.Learn more about the latest performance features during your visit or schedule a test drive for the real thing.

 

[scottm]

Games: who gives a f*

Fix the UI for the parts that, you know, operate the car.

You're wasting energy Tesla.

We are not amused.

 

[scottm]

Wrong. I like the games! Or at least the "idea" that it has ,and updates , the games.
It's not like they are ignoring other areas..

Yes. They are ignoring other areas.

Here's a fun idea for Tesla: fix the UI

Make it so I want to take my screen off cleaning mode when I'm demoing the car.

 

[NinjaVece]

Yes. They are ignoring other areas.

Here's a fun idea for Tesla: fix the UI

Make it so I want to take my screen off cleaning mode when I'm demoing the car.

I hear the UI on the e-tron may be more your taste.

 

[electronblue]

Half the investors here complain about Tesla not spending money on advertising, as if a few million in ads would make any difference against billions spent by incumbent automobile companies.

You know, it can cost $50,000 to be a “sponsor” at a conference which lets you stick a few signs up that are promptly forgotten if anyone notices at all, or hundreds of thousands for a booth at a large show.

Tesla spends hundreds of thousands on a feature, which gets top exposure to a massive demographic, plasters their name all over the news for weeks, is positioned as a cool company, AND paves the way for future third party apps.

And people whine.

Sometimes it’s not only the shorts who fail to see the big picture.

This is a much more honest analysis than the silly notion that the games are made by ”a trainee” learning the ropes.

No, Tesla Arcade is obviously a significant project within Tesla that has significant resources behind it... because the end-result markets and sells cars. I’m sure it does. In that sense it is smart.

That sounds realistic and honest to me. Many years of following Tesla have driven the point home to me and this bit concurs: Tesla cares about new car sales more than about appeasing existing owners or grievances they may have. It is all about the next sale.

 

[jgs]

I just hope all this gaming crap^H^H^H^H stuff is virtually free, being done by an intern porting existing games to run on top of an existing emulator. I DGAF what unused features they drop on my car, but I would hate to think they're spending real resources on it.

I honestly cannot believe they sent out this email.

My wife got it and was dumbfounded, thought it was a joke. Then she was primed to write back "actually, Tesla, you might be surprised to hear this but I am not a teenaged boy". I can't blame her.

 

[mrmage]

This is a much more honest analysis than the silly notion that the games are made by ”a trainee” learning the ropes.

No, Tesla Arcade is obviously a significant project within Tesla that has significant resources behind it... because the end-result markets and sells cars. I’m sure it does. In that sense it is smart.

That sounds realistic and honest to me. Many years of following Tesla have driven the point home to me and this bit concurs: Tesla cares about new car sales more than about appeasing existing owners or grievances they may have. It is all about the next sale.

Tesla can care about new car sales AND care about existing customers. The new cars that Tesla sells generates the cash to support existing customers, so getting new customers is a priority. How is that different than any other auto company?

Also, Tesla is porting Unity and Unreal game platforms to the cars. Cuphead is built with Unity, so it may have taken only a day to port. The dev resources are mostly spent on porting Unity and Unreal.

Btw, for anyone not familiar with Unity and Unreal, they’re good for much more than just games. Just about any visual app can be written quickly and easily, and they have a huge base of third party asset libraries to extend their functionality.

 

[electronblue]

Tesla can care about new car sales AND care about existing customers. The new cars that Tesla sells generates the cash to support existing customers, so getting new customers is a priority. How is that different than any other auto company?

Of course they CAN. I’m just not sure they do.

The difference of course is that other car companies do usually have a business model more based on repetition, e.g. product lifecycles that encourage re-purchases on steady intervals as well as service (both things Tesla has tried to get rid of mainly), as well as more mature processes. Tesla’s way has some benefits, but mostly the ownership experience has been going down hill in recent years due to this.

 

[SO16]

My wife got it and was dumbfounded, thought it was a joke. Then she was primed to write back "actually, Tesla, you might be surprised to hear this but I am not a teenaged boy". I can't blame her.

I don’t understand her surprise. Isn’t that the norm for many people?

I get notifications for all sorts of things that don’t apply to me. Never thought anything of it.

 

[jgs]

I don’t understand her surprise. Isn’t that the norm for many people?

I get notifications for all sorts of things that don’t apply to me. Never thought anything of it.

The breathless tone of the announcement from Tesla (can you believe it? we have games! so awesome!) was not relatable from her point of view. Nor mine, nor, to judge by many of the responses upthread, a lot of other people.

Or possibly this is Poe's Law at work and you missed the sarcasm?

 

[SO16]

The breathless tone of the announcement from Tesla (can you believe it? we have games! so awesome!) was not relatable from her point of view. Nor mine, nor, to judge by many of the responses upthread, a lot of other people.

Or possibly this is Poe's Law at work and you missed the sarcasm?

So I guess Tesla needs to keep track of who has kids between the ages of 5 and 15.

 

[jgs]

So I guess Tesla needs to keep track of who has kids between the ages of 5 and 15.

We do. They also DGAF. Whatever.

 

[mrmage]

The complaints about using developers to create games lead me to believe there's some confusion on how game development works.

Games are developed on game engines like Unity and Unreal, which Tesla is already porting. Although porting game engines takes time, the actual games take very little time, if any, from Tesla because the game engine takes care of most the porting issues.

Game engines (despite their name) are not just for games. They're rapid app development platforms for visually extensive apps, the kind running today on the Tesla console.

Game engines also have many third party developers that create libraries to extend the platform, which can be leveraged by developers.

The kind of applications that can be quickly developed include:

- Media and MP3 players with USB and Bluetooth
- Video recorders
- Car monitoring tools
- Car performance and visualization
- Diagnostic tools
- Further automation of car functions
- Trip navigation and planning enhancements

So if you want Tesla to include non-game features, you should be happy that they're porting Unity and Unreal. This is the first step towards opening the platform to third party developers. If this happens, the number of apps for the car will explode.

 

[electronblue]

Do they really have to ”port” Unity and Unreal though? Both are fully capable of ”exporting” Linux games, right?

 

[ASC9177]

Tesla owners should show up at the stores and instead of watching the Tesla Arcade demo, they should ask when will Tesla have full support for USB music devices like every other car company in the world. Fast, responsive support for browsing music by artist, genre, album, track title, and playlist. This is music 101, and every car company in the world other than Tesla pretty much has support for this. It continues to be inexplicable that Tesla refuses to provide this support. I frankly could care less about the games, the farts, and the other easter eggs: I want decent music support, period.

I agree. I have had so many quality issues with this vehicle it is quite astounding. No Carplay, no USB support for devices. Things keep breaking over and over again.

This morning - no cruise control and could not close my garage door despite a reset.

I don't care about videogames in a car, or fart noises, or "driving" on Mars.

Poor customer service (6 weeks to get my home Tesla charger fixed).

I don't care about these Easter Eggs.

Fix the after sales customer service/parts availability and work on the basics.

I am so fed up with Tesla

Thank god my lease is up next year. I can't wait to get rid of this car.

 

[mrmage]

Do they really have to ”port” Unity and Unreal though? Both are fully capable of ”exporting” Linux games, right?

Unity supports Linux now, but assumes a standard pc configuration for runtime hardware, like graphics, keyboard, and controllers. Unsupported hardware configurations need to be added before games can be exported to Tesla.

Porting a game theoretically requires just remapping the its io and a few other settings, but platform specific issues often arise. For example, a real steering wheel may not have quite the same responsiveness as a game controller steering wheel, so the game studio would need to compensate.

For Unreal, the process should be similar but I’ve only worked on Unity.

If Tesla opens this up for third parties, I’d totally write an app for it, and probably half the other devs who own Teslas.

 

[scottm]

I hear the UI on the e-tron may be more your taste.

Probably, yes, you may be right.

I'll take a look.

I sat across from a Jag iPace at the last EV show where I parked my model S and model 3...
These newcomer EVs are looking real good to street eyes who are new and wanting to get into EV.
They'll notice a nice UI when they see one.

Talked to the owner of iPace, who doesn't care about less range or efficiency of his car, he was very well aware of Tesla's advantages in these areas. But he waited until Jag was available, as it satisfies all of his driving use cases without charging in the day. And it's a gorgeous vehicle.

I hopped in the Jag's back seat and glanced at the dashboard... and it has smartly integrated center screen that blends seamlessly into the dash, all black, with a nice Jag cat logo (yes, skeumorphic: raised chrome ornament) displayed when the screen is idle. Very classy touch you can't even tell a screen is there - it just looks like a Jag logo placed on a dashboard.

Tesla has a washed out flat T fang logo on a grey washed out screen background on a very obvious screen-stuck-on-the-dash... and this logo shows only when rebooting or powering up for a minute.

So before any fun even begins on either screen, just sitting there in a showroom... I have to say the UI advantage goes to Jag, on display quality. Let's talk about yellow edges on a Tesla screen now....

 

[scottm]

The complaints about using developers to create games lead me to believe there's some confusion on how game development works.

Games are developed on game engines like Unity and Unreal, which Tesla is already porting. Although porting game engines takes time, the actual games take very little time, if any, from Tesla because the game engine takes care of most the porting issues.

Game engines (despite their name) are not just for games. They're rapid app development platforms for visually extensive apps, the kind running today on the Tesla console.

Game engines also have many third party developers that create libraries to extend the platform, which can be leveraged by developers.

The kind of applications that can be quickly developed include:

- Media and MP3 players with USB and Bluetooth
- Video recorders
- Car monitoring tools
- Car performance and visualization
- Diagnostic tools
- Further automation of car functions
- Trip navigation and planning enhancements

So if you want Tesla to include non-game features, you should be happy that they're porting Unity and Unreal. This is the first step towards opening the platform to third party developers. If this happens, the number of apps for the car will explode.

Or in Tesla style... it has all the potential benefits of these things but nothing useful will actually come of it.

Tesla stinks of "potential", but needs to start reeking of "actual". They need to deliver.

 

[SO16]

Probably, yes, you may be right.

I'll take a look.

I sat across from a Jag iPace at the last EV show where I parked my model S and model 3...
These newcomer EVs are looking real good to street eyes who are new and wanting to get into EV.
They'll notice a nice UI when they see one.

Talked to the owner of iPace, who doesn't care about less range or efficiency of his car, he was very well aware of Tesla's advantages in these areas. But he waited until Jag was available, as it satisfies all of his driving use cases without charging in the day. And it's a gorgeous vehicle.

I hopped in the Jag's back seat and glanced at the dashboard... and it has smartly integrated center screen that blends seamlessly into the dash, all black, with a nice Jag cat logo (yes, skeumorphic: raised chrome ornament) displayed when the screen is idle. Very classy touch you can't even tell a screen is there - it just looks like a Jag logo placed on a dashboard.

Tesla has a washed out flat T fang logo on a grey washed out screen background on a very obvious screen-stuck-on-the-dash... and this logo shows only when rebooting or powering up for a minute.

So before any fun even begins on either screen, just sitting there in a showroom... I have to say the UI advantage goes to Jag, on display quality. Let's talk about yellow edges on a Tesla screen now....

Jag interface was laggy and not intuitive. More screen switching. The interior felt cheap (sitting in the front). The etron was better built.

A little early to tout fewer issues with ipace. Give it a few years.

 

[mrmage]

Or in Tesla style... it has all the potential benefits of these things but nothing useful will actually come of it.

Tesla stinks of "potential", but needs to start reeking of "actual". They need to deliver.

How does improving the speed and quality of software development for the UI and possibly expanding the base of developers to third parties not help?

 

[scottm]

How does improving the speed and quality of software development for the UI and possibly expanding the base of developers to third parties not help?

I guess what I'm saying is, yes it's good in theory and sounds like it will help... but I'll believe it only when I see it.

So show me something Tesla. Take something off the backlog and fix it. No new farts for us old farts.