The Battle of In-Car Entertainment Functions Has Moved to a Tasteless WarAuthor | Yan Xuegong
Source | Snow Leopard Watch
The latest versions of the Model S and Model X can run thousands of Steam games. However, due to reasons such as model restrictions and poor game experience, Tesla’s move has been questioned by many users.
Musk has spared no effort to bring Steam to the car, not only to start the third space card battle, to explore the possibility of more paid software services, but also to increase user stickiness, thereby boosting sales.
The prerequisite for cars to become the third space is to realize automatic driving. Prior to this, car companies’ introversion in audio-visual entertainment was more of a tasteless function in the eyes of users.
The game dream that has been questioned
What kind of experience is it to have a private mobile game hall with a level of one million RMB?
In a recent holiday update, Tesla used the game to show off its car technology. “Cyberpunk 2077”, a game that requires high configuration on PC, has been able to run smoothly on Model S and Model X in the past two years. For a monthly fee of US$9.9, overseas Tesla owners can run about 5,000 games on Steam on the car.
On the same day, Tesla also listed a 1TB on-board mobile hard drive in the official store to improve the user’s gaming experience.
Model S and Model X support about 5,000 Steam games
Playing games in Tesla cars is Musk’s long-cherished wish.
As early as 2018, Tesla built pixel games into the car system, and the games in the car have been continuously upgraded since then. In September 2020, Tesla wrote in the recruitment notice for recruiting the game team: “Tesla strives to make the car as interesting as possible, and bringing the video game experience to the car will help increase the fun.”
In 2021, in the promotional poster of the Model S high-performance version, the 3A game masterpiece “The Witcher 3” will be put on Tesla’s car. In February of this year, a reporter asked Musk whether he could play “Cyberpunk 2077” on Tesla in the future. Musk replied that Tesla’s goal is not to transplant a certain game to the car, but to hope All Steam games can be run in the car. This wish finally came true after nearly a year.
On the promotional poster of the new Model S in 2021
The 3A game “The Witcher 3” appeared
However, while being praised as “cool”, this move has also caused a lot of controversy.
On the one hand, Tesla’s ability to play 3A masterpieces on the car is mainly due to the latest AMD chip and discrete graphics card equipped with the new version of the model. According to AMD CEO Su Fengzi, the computing power of this car-machine chip is basically equivalent to PS5. However, Model 3 and Model Y are not equipped with discrete graphics cards, and in the third quarter of this year, these two models accounted for 94.6% of Tesla’s overall sales. This means that a considerable number of Tesla owners miss Steam games.
Some car owners said on Twitter that due to insufficient hardware, this function cannot be turned on even through OTA upgrades in the future, “This is essentially a kind of discrimination against our 3/Y car owners, and Musk will only use cooler function for car owners who buy expensive models”. At present, the price of Model S/X supporting this function is as high as one million yuan.
On the other hand, some people have questioned Tesla’s gaming experience.
Some netizens said that currently only games on the portable handheld game console Steam Deck can be played in the car. There are 5,000 games on Steam Deck, which is only 1% of the Steam platform.
Screen configuration is the most important thing when playing games, but Model S and Model X are only equipped with a 17-inch screen, which is far behind the 24/27-inch screens of mainstream PCs, and it cannot be compared with ultra-high-definition TVs that are tens of inches larger. “I don’t want to keep tilting my head and looking at the screen.” Some netizens left a message on Musk’s social account.
More importantly, the car is not a familiar game scene. Many car owners commented on Musk’s Twitter, “Why should I play games in the car instead of sitting comfortably at home?” “I would rather drive a Tesla pickup in “Cyberpunk” than Playing Cyberpunk in a pickup.”
Musk, who has always been active on social media, did not reply to the above remarks.
Battle for the Third Space
Musk has revealed in many interviews that he is obsessed with games, but he has spared no effort to move Steam to Tesla, and the more important goal is to gain an advantage in the third space card battle of smart cars.
At present, the intelligentization of automobiles is focused on two major battlefields—autonomous driving and smart cockpits. Compared with automatic driving, which has been slow to see the hope of landing, the smart cockpit, which is easier to realize and perceived by users, has become a battleground for car companies.
According to IHS markit survey data, 61.3% of users believe that the intelligent configuration of the cockpit will greatly increase their interest in car purchases, and 17.4% of consumers believe that the smart cockpit is a must-have configuration for car purchases.
In Musk’s vision, cars in the future will be able to drive fully autonomously without driver control, which means that people will have more time in the car and be able to expand more usage scenarios, and entertainment and interactive functions will be promising.
In fact, “involving” in the smart cockpit has become the common choice of many car companies, of which audio-visual entertainment functions account for most of them.
At the Xpeng G9 conference, founder He Xiaopeng spent nearly half of the time introducing the 5D music function of the new car. Xiaopeng P5 is equipped with a 45-inch projection screen in the car, which claims to “create a third space outside the home and work”. NIO has brought VR into the car, hoping that car owners can “realize theater-level audio-visual enjoyment” in the car. Ideal is equipped with 5 screens on the new car L9.
Ideal L9 equipped with 5 screens
Three of them are 15.7-inch OLED screens
The new car-making forces represented by Wei Xiaoli are still actively cooperating with streaming media platforms such as Ayouteng to expand their entertainment content, and have built many games in the car. (For details, see “Five screens in a car, does anyone really watch the World Cup in the car?” by Snow Leopard Finance and Economics.)
Traditional car companies have also joined the involution in the direction of audio-visual entertainment. Mercedes-Benz is equipped with a 1.41-meter long screen on the EQS, and a 31-inch screen is suspended in the BMW car.
Mercedes-Benz is equipped with a 1.41-meter ultra-long curved screen on the EQS
Musk has said many times, “Software is the key to the future.” Smart cockpits are the main focus for car companies to explore software payment business models.
From OTA upgrade functions to self-driving software packages, Tesla has changed the traditional profit model of the auto industry, and software subscription fees are regarded as a potential source of income for auto companies. Shengang Securities predicted in a research report that in 2025, Tesla’s software revenue will reach 21.5 billion US dollars, accounting for 18% of the overall revenue. In addition to the $9.9 monthly fee, cooperation with Steam can also bring Tesla additional hardware revenue through game-supporting mobile hard drives, wireless handles, keyboards, etc.
Through games, audio-visual and other entertainment functions to expand the usage scenarios of cars, compete for user time, and increase user stickiness, car companies are launching a battle for the third space of smart cars.
The Game World of Rootless Trees
Can Musk’s wishful thinking become a reality by creating differentiation, boosting sales, and increasing income through Steam boarding? The answer is probably not so optimistic.
On the one hand, only when fully autonomous driving is realized, the driver can free his hands and focus, spend more time in the car enjoying more audio-visual entertainment functions, and the car can also tear off the label of the means of transportation and become a real third space. But until now, the large-scale implementation of autonomous driving is still a problem.
In October this year, Argo AI, a self-driving star enterprise with a valuation of as much as 7 billion US dollars, announced its bankruptcy, which caused a strong shock in the industry. In the previous few months, the person in charge of Tesla’s autonomous driving resigned, and the autonomous driving experts of many mainstream car companies left one after another. Musk once claimed that fully autonomous driving will be achieved in 2019, but it is still far away today. (For details, see Snow Leopard Finance and Economics “The Biggest Bubble of Smart Cars, Bursted by Teslas”)
The absence of fully autonomous driving technology means that playing games in the car can only be an option for a small number of people.
On the other hand, more and more screens, games, and audio-visual functions in cars have not satisfied consumers, but have caused many doubts. There are voices who believe that the involution of car companies in the smart cockpit has gradually gone astray. Smart is not more and more screens and unused entertainment functions, but the focus is on improving the driving experience, and some people have concerns about in-car entertainment functions. concerns about security risks.
He Xiaopeng and Li Bin have publicly stated that there is no need for so many screens in the car, and too many screens will make users feel dizzy. Li Xiang replied, saying that using VR technology to replace the screen “lacks basic common sense and awe.”
What’s more, limited by many factors such as software and hardware, the user experience of most smart car entertainment functions still needs to be improved.
Take the 5D music cockpit of Xiaopeng G9 as an example. Although this car claims to be able to improve user experience in multiple aspects such as touch, smell, vision, and hearing, there are very few sources that support these functions. Many car owners left messages in the Xiaopeng community, and the 5D music cockpit is one of the functions with the lowest opening rate. At the beginning of its release, Xiaopeng G9 regarded the 5D music cockpit as an important selling point, and the optional price was as high as 22,000 yuan, but it was criticized by many users. Less than 48 hours later, Xiaopeng changed its price strategy, and all models except low configurations come standard with a 5D music cockpit.
Whether it is the ideal L9 with 5 screens stuffed into the car, or the NIO ET5 equipped with AR/VR technology, the smart cockpit is not practical enough, and it is difficult to win the support of users. Steam games on Tesla Model S and Model X may hardly be an exception.
As long as the driver’s hands are not fully released for one day, the efforts Tesla and Wei Xiaoli have spent on entertainment functions are destined to be just meaningless disputes within a limited time and space.
(Disclaimer: This article only represents the author’s point of view, not the position of Sina.com.)
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