Teslas have had games through Tesla Arcade for many years, but now thanks to Google’s new initiative, they just gained access to 75 new, full-screen titles. YouTube Playables lets you enjoy games using just a web browser, whether it’s on your phone, computer, or in your vehicle.
YouTube’s new Playables include fairly popular mobile game adaptions, including classics like Cut the Rope, Chess, Daily Crossword, Element Blocks, and others.
How to Access Playables
The easiest way to access the new games in your car is to open up the YouTube app in Tesla Theater. YouTube is requiring users to sign in to use Playables. Once you’re signed in, you can navigate to Playables or open search, and type “Youtube Playables.” The list of Playables will appear as a horizontal bar. On the right side of the bar, a “See All” button will appear.
There are currently more than 75 games on YouTube Playables, and YouTube intends to add more as time goes on.
Full Screen or Windowed Play
You can also play games in a smaller window view
Not a Tesla App
Thanks to Tesla opening up YouTube in a full-screen window, you can enjoy games full-screen, just like Tesla’s other Arcade titles. However, you can also play the games in a smaller windowed version by tapping the icon on the top-left corner. This is useful if you want to access other vehicle controls such as climate as well.
Game Compatibility
YouTube Playables works on Intel and AMD vehicles, and since they just use the browser, they don’t require a download. On Intel-based cars, there’s a noticeable lag in some games, but most games are still enjoyable and playable on the older MCU. While the loading experience is fine on AMD vehicles, it is fairly slow on Intel vehicles. All games use the vehicle’s touchscreen and don’t currently support controllers, however, these are adapted mobile games which rely on having a touchscreen device.
Future of Games on Tesla
With Tesla recently removing Steam from newer vehicles, and now with YouTube’s announcement of 75+ browser-based games, it seems that Tesla’s game ambitions may change. While YouTube Playables can’t compare to the titles that were available on Steam, most users don’t need to play Triple-A titles in their car. If they choose to load up a game, it’s mostly to pass a little bit of time.
Now that Teslas have access to almost a hundred games on top of what Tesla already offers, we may see Tesla’s efforts change since the casual gaming need is already being fulfilled by someone else. Tesla may instead choose to pour time and resources into other Tesla features or provide a unique gaming experience like they’re doing with the addition to Beach Buggy Racing - Supercharger Races. This special edition of the game lets you set the fastest lap at your local Supercharger and climb up your Supercharger’s leaderboard.
Video
A how-to on accessing 75 new and free games in your Tesla using Youtube’s new Playables list!!! pic.twitter.com/Fr3s87MCEK
While we haven’t received a full set of release notes to compare against, it seems that this update won’t bring much other than bug fixes. We recently took a deeper look at the new features available on V12.4.2 here.
Update: As expected, the release notes remain the same as FSD v12.4.2 and this update just includes bug fixes.
Given how rapid-fire Tesla has begun releasing updates to internal testers, employees, and early-access customers, it seems there could be a couple more iterations of V12.4 before it hits customers, as Tesla tunes FSD.
Why so many Versions and Delays?
While nobody is happy about delays, one needs to keep in mind that Tesla has to keep safety as a priority for FSD releases. If a release goes out wide to hundreds of thousands of vehicles that are unsafe, there could be considerable impacts on people’s lives.
Beyond that, each subversion is Tesla adjusting their AI model, fine-tuning it to be able to better drive in both normal and edge cases. As such, watching these subversion releases go by is a good thing – at the end of the day, we’ll end up with a better, safer product.
Every version also has to be tested internally first among their dedicated ADAS testers, then among employees, and finally with Tesla’s early-access customers. Once all these people give a green light, and most errors and major bugs are addressed, does a release get the green light to go wide.
So, stay tuned for when this release goes out wider than this leak and possibly comes to your vehicle with nag-free FSD.
Tesla’s FSD V12.4.2 has landed in the wild – at least among early-access customers this week. There have been a few videos and some folks have begun to provide feedback on X, on the update and how it's going.
For now, it hasn’t gone wide to customers and only early-access testers and employees have it on their vehicles. FSD 12.4.2 is update 2024.15.10 and it’s expected to be available to everyone on update 2024.14 who owns or subscribes to FSD… eventually.
Consistent, Confident
Early-access testers have found FSD V12.4.2 to be considerably more confident, and more consistent when it makes decisions. V12.4.2 seems more confident when making unprotected left turns and encountering construction or complex interchanges.
They’ve also had more consistency and confidence with the Auto Speed feature, which adjusts the vehicle’s speed automatically based on traffic conditions, and also noted that it has improvements with lane selection, which was a larger issue in V12.4.1.
Users have also noted that the Vision-Based Driver Monitoring System is more confident and can see better at night. On V12.4.1, the Vision-Based DMS was unavailable at nighttime, and nags would still occur – but on V12.4.2, this restriction appears to be removed.
Regressions
There are still some regressions, with @DirtyTesLa on X noting that V12.4.2 seems to fail a left turn on an unmarked dirt road that it has previously made.
@WholeMarsBlog also noted that he had one critical safety intervention and that FSD missed a turn onto the highway, noting it was a regression from his experience on V12.4.1. Overall, he has had multiple intervention-free drives.
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