[Narrator] Cars are becoming more autonomous.
As passengers, we'll have more time to relax
and entertain ourselves.
Car companies see a big opportunity
not only to provide the car,
but also to provide the entertainment.
What kind of entertainment
are car companies most excited about?
Video games.
Yes, video games.
Played on monitors, on headsets,
and even on windshields in our cars.
It's not science fiction.
The technology is here today.
Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi
have all made forays into gaming.
Ayoub Aouad: Right now, in a Tesla,
you can play Atari or play Centipede.
And they just recently announced that
they're gonna enhance the technology in their vehicles
that could potentially "Fortnite" to Teslas.
[Narrator] This is Ayoub Aouad.
He's watched car companies invest heavily
in the in-car entertainment experience.
The technology he's referring to
are the game engines Unreal and Unity,
which Tesla CEO Elon Musk plans to bring into his cars.
We asked a video games reporter
why this was important.
Kevin Webb: Unreal Engine and Unity
are both game-development platforms.
They're used far and wide by
tons of different game companies just to design games,
whether it's for mobile phones or consoles.
You can use those suites the same way
you might use, like, Photoshop to put a game together.
Making infotainment systems more compatible
with these kind of dev tools will just make it
that much easier for developers who are
already working on games for other platforms
to make them available in the car.
[Narrator] Studio MDHR did just this
with their popular indie side-scroller "Cuphead."
In an interview for IGN, Elon Musk reported
MDHR and Tesla had ported the Unity game
and that it would be available to play
on Tesla's central-console touchscreens
in a limited capacity later this summer.
Tesla isn't the only company interested in video games.
Audi worked with Disney to develop
a virtual-reality "Guardians of the Galaxy"-themed game
called "Avengers: Rocket's Rescue Run."
The VR, backseat gaming experience
is designed to react to real-world factors.
When the car accelerates or turns sharply,
so does Rocket's ship in-game.
Mercedes-Benz is also in the hunt.
Aouad: Daimler, which is the parent company
of Mercedes-Benz, has also launched its own
in-car gaming competition
where startups and developers
can create their own immersive gaming experience.
You know, this could revolutionize
the in-game, in-car experience.
[Narrator] Video games have taken the world by storm.
Gaming is a $135 billion industry
and a pastime practiced in nearly every home.
"Fortnite," by developer Epic Games, for example,
has more than 200 million global users,
while Respawn Entertainment's "Apex Legends"
accumulated 50 million in its first month.
Car companies hope customers will value
an in-car gaming experience
as they do a car's interior or performance.
Webb: I think the idea of, like,
selling a car package based on video games is kind of funny,
but at the same time, we see people spend thousands and
thousands of dollars on just gaming as a hobby.
So being able to extend that into your car does make sense.
For the video game industry,
the idea of exclusivity has always been around,
from, you know, Nintendo and Sega to PlayStation and Xbox.
The fact that a car company could have their own
exclusive offerings in terms of video games
will probably get people involved.
[Narrator] Ride-sharing companies want in on the action.
Aouad: Eventually, if autonomous vehicles take off,
you're not gonna have drivers anymore,
and so how do you create the best experience for your riders
that, like, differentiate Uber from Lyft?
And that's, like, creating, like,
a really unique, awesome in-car experience.
If we take GM, with its autonomous ride-hailing group,
Cruise, you know, they're fighting against Uber,
they're fighting against Lyft,
they're fighting against Waymo,
who all plan to introduce their own
autonomous ride-hailing services.
Whereas previously it might be the driver
that's a differentiator, or the actual ride,
now it's gonna be the actual in-car experience.
[Narrator] We may not see a full living-room experience
in our cars this year.
But recent advancements in gaming technology
indicate we're close.
Phil Spencer: Our cloud engineers are building
a game-streaming network to unlock console-quality gaming
on any device.
Webb: So the next big thing in gaming
is going to just be streaming games.
Google just announced Stadia,
which is going to be their video-game-streaming platform.
Microsoft has a new program called Project xCloud
that they're going to be able to just
beam games to your phone using your internet connection.
I guess the goal of Google Stadia
and these other cloud-gaming platforms
is to make you forget what you're playing the game on and
just worry about what it is that you're choosing to play.
With Stadia, you'll be able to
pause that game in your living room
and pick it up from the exact same location in your car,
because the actual computer that's running the game
is miles and miles away, and all you need
is the internet connection to take it with you.
So when it comes to these infotainment systems in the car,
if you have a strong enough internet connection,
it's possible that you'll be able to beam a game
directly to the screen and just play from there
and not have to worry about
whether it's compatible or not.
Aouad: The future is that, like, every single display
and window in the vehicle is part of the experience.
And, like, that future, if it's like that,
will be pretty cool.