Tesla has partnered with PUBG Mobile, a popular battle royale video game, in a new integration of Tesla’s products inside the mobile game.
Over the last few years, Tesla has been porting many video games on its own platform inside its vehicles.
Now it’s the other way around.
PUBG Mobile released its 1.5 update this week, and they announced a “collaboration” with Tesla that involves integrating the automaker’s products into the game.
The company wrote in the release notes:
“The technological transformation of Erangel has caught the attention of Tesla. Tesla will build a Gigafactory on Erangel to produce classic models of its cars, as well as provide more technologically advanced autonomous driving experiences and supply transportation solutions. In the new mode, Mission Ignition, players will be able to experience Tesla exclusive content.”
Here is the actual Tesla integration into the game:
- Tesla Gigafactory: The Tesla Gigafactory will appear on the map. Activate all switches of the assembly lines in the factory to start the car assembly process and build a Tesla vehicle – Model Y.
- Model Y + Self-driving: The self-driving cars produced at the Tesla Gigafactory have an autopilot mode that can be activated on the highways on the map to automatically take players to the location of pre-set markers along the highway.
- Tesla Semi: These self-driving transportation vehicles developed by Tesla will spawn randomly along the road in the wild and will drive automatically on specific routes. Obtain battle supplies by dealing damage to the Semi to make it drop Supply Crates.
You can get a quick preview of some of those integrations at the end of this video:
This is an interesting new development in Tesla’s continued push into video games, but it becomes more understandable when you realize that Tencent Games owns PUBG, and Tencent is a major shareholder in Tesla.
As a matter of fact, Tesla previously had a similar integration with “Game of Peace,” which is China’s version of the PUBG mobile game.
The move is good for Tesla’s popularity since the PUBG mobile has been downloaded over 1 billion times, and it is among the most popular mobile video games in the world.
Tesla is going into the video game business
As we previously reported, Tesla has a team of software engineers working on video games in Seattle, and they recently started building a similar team in Austin.
The automaker has been building a video game platform called Tesla Arcade inside its vehicles, and it has been working with video game studios to port games to it.
Right now, it is mainly to create some added value to its ownership experience, but Tesla might have bigger plans for gaming inside its vehicles.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been indicating recently that he believes “entertainment will be critical when cars drive themselves,” which he thinks Tesla can achieve later this year.
In preparation for that, the automaker has been releasing more video games in its Tesla Arcade, and it has indicated that it might turn it into a business.
We have seen indications that Tesla plans to offer paid packages of different video games inside its vehicles, which would start to get into the same business as Valve’s Steam, the Playstation Store, or the Xbox Live store.
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