Car brands from BMW to Volkswagen lean into in-car gaming

Last week, Volkswagen announced a partnership with the gaming platform company AirConsole to bring video games into its European vehicles this fall. And on Aug. 15, BMW announced a strategic partnership with Mattel to bring the popular card game UNO into its vehicles, building on the company’s pre-existing partnership with AirConsole, which kicked off last year.

“It’s about satisfying a real desire out in the market. There is a desire for gaming, and it might not be a buying criteria, where a customer says, ‘I only bought this BMW because of this game,’ but it’s part of the product characteristics,” said Stefan Putz, vp of development, entertainment and apps at BMW Group. “I think you need to offer it. If you don’t offer it, you might be perceived as an old-school company.”

Tesla was an early mover in the in-car gaming space due to the inherent waiting periods that come with owning an electric vehicle. As drivers waited to charge their vehicles, the thinking went, they would want to distract themselves with games and entertainment. Now that other major car manufacturers are jumping into the electric market, they are following a similar thought process.

But the long-term potential for in-car gaming extends far beyond the relatively brief moments in which drivers are charging or waiting inside cars. As more vehicles become fully autonomous, drivers’ eyeballs no longer have to be focused on the road, turning them into a potentially lucrative target for advertisers.

“Cars are eventually going to become fully self-driving, but I think the question is, what are people going to do while they’re commuting? And I think car companies want to make sure that what happened to TVs and the cable networks in the living room doesn’t happen to them,” said Jackson Vaughan, a managing partner at gaming-focused venture capital firm Konvoy Ventures. “As eyeballs shift from the road to screens within the car, there’s a significant opportunity for these car companies to capture that attention.”

At the moment, 20 games are available for play inside a total of 500,000 participating BMW vehicles, including “UNO Car Party.” Players can use their smartphones as controllers, with the screen in the front console of the car acting as the focal point of the experience. AirConsole is included as part of a $60 entertainment subscription package available for BMW vehicles using BMW Operating Systems 8.5 and 9, with a year-long free trial offered to interested users.

BMW’s expansion into gaming could represent the beginning of a potential gold rush of car manufacturers into the medium. BMW was AirConsole’s first partner in the automotive space, but as Volkswagen similarly takes a step into gaming, other mainstream car companies are likely to follow.

“As our first partner, BMW introduced us to the world of automotive entertainment and it’s technical challenges: Running games on infotainment hardware, car connectivity, driver security restrictions, et cetera. This partnership allowed us to gain invaluable learnings that we can directly apply to new OEMs [original equipment manufacturers],” said AirConsole founder Andrin von Rechenberg. “However, bringing such a sophisticated gaming solution to another OEM’s infotainment system always requires a platform specific software integration to provide a world-class in-car gaming experience.”

By leaning further into gaming via partnerships with platforms such as AirConsole and intellectual property holders like Mattel, BMW has also signaled its continued interest in reaching the gaming audience despite the company’s explicit plans to divest from esports beginning in 2023. Putz declined to comment on the relationship between BMW’s investment in in-car gaming and its divestment from esports, but made it clear that the casual multiplayer games offered by AirConsole are a good fit for BMW’s brand messaging.

“A core brand value of BMW is joy, and if we as a brand can create moments of digital joy in the car, customers will remember these good moments,” said the BMW executive. “They will associate this with BMWs, and this is why this is of super-high value.”