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We chat with Airconsole's head of operations about a new way to enjoy your favourite games.
"Hello everyone, I'm Alex here with Gamereactor.
I'm at Endream, we're talking about the AirConsole.
It's a way to play in your car, play games in your car, which is something that I'm sure is going to excite a lot of our readers."
"I'm here with Andrzej.
What can you tell me about the way that AirConsole, I guess, brings gaming on the go in a way that we've not really seen before?
Yeah, so for us, we are originally a gaming platform on the TV."
"And we were designed so that people can play together in a living room.
And then in 2022, when the EVs came to the market, BMW approached us and was like, hey, when people charge their car, it takes 20-30 minutes."
"What can I do in the car?
And then they asked us to bring our experience, where you can play together to the car.
And it's super easy because you can just enter the car, scan the QR code, and then your browser, you get the controller."
"And you can play either single player, I think 60% of our sessions are single player ones.
But you can play games together like Uno or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire that are designed for group play."
"Overcooked in there as well, a personal favorite of mine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So how many titles do you have on this sort of console available then?
So on the web, we have over 100."
"But in the car, we have around 40 in BMW.
And on some other brands that we added up later, we have around 20-30.
Still, that's quite a lot for you not to get bored."
"So it's designed primarily then for people who are sitting while their EVs charge more so than a family maybe in the backseat while someone else is driving and things like that.
Yeah, so with the cars who only have the screen in the middle, you cannot play while driving because of driver distraction."
"So there you can only play while the car is stationary.
And it's usually just these short moments where you have 10-20 minutes of waiting for your kid to come from school or charging.
And what was your other question?
That was it."
"I was going to ask next about the processing power.
What's the upper limit, I guess, of what you want to achieve with this?
Because while a lot of gamers might look at, say, they want the best graphics and things like that, when you're playing in a car, you probably don't need that."
"So what's your guys' end goal, I guess, with what games you can achieve with this platform?
So actually, you are completely right, because people just want to have simple games that are about fun and not about specs."
"So we never really focus on getting amazing graphics.
We are just trying to get... We're using Unity.
So we always try to get the most that we can get from the hardware in terms of the frame rate or resolution."
"But in the end, we use maximum two cores of the car and only the newest, newest cars that are coming to the market this year, or maybe Tesla, have processing powers that could handle something that you could compare with a gaming console."
"But we understood from the gameplay that most people are not looking for that, because if you are a hardcore player, why would you play on a small screen in a car if you can play at home, right?
So we're not trying to replace it."
"We leave that for you can still play on the phone if you want to play something high resolution.
This is more really just a short, fun play of Pac-Man for five minutes.
So you guys have partnered with BMW, partnered with Audi."
"Are there any plans in the future to expand those partnerships as EVs continue to grow?
Yeah, so we also partnered up with Porsche, Volkswagen, and Skoda.
And now we have two partners, one in Japan, one in the US, that we're starting working together this year."
"So definitely we want to expand more.
We're also in discussions with some cars who just develop autonomous driving.
Because we believe when you are in a car like Baymall, you have nothing to do, right?
So it's an interesting use case for us."
"But these cars currently have tens of thousands of cars on the street.
So from the financial point of view, it's not that interesting for us compared to BMW produces millions of cars, right?
Andrej, just one more thing before we go."
"Where do you see this going in the future alongside brand partnerships, alongside game development?
Where do you see this upper limit of how this is going to build interaction, I guess, between drivers and their screens?
Yeah, so definitely see a trend of more screens coming to the car."
"So in the newest cars you have up to four screens.
So theoretically everyone can be playing their own game.
What we're trying to build is always games where you play together, right?
So we can see scenarios where everyone has their own screen but they are playing against each other or together."
"That's really interesting.
Also we are experimenting with different ways of playing.
For example, audio-only games where the driver can play.
We did some tests with BMW and we realized that it actually improves the attention."
"So when the brain is engaged about 20% in the game, they actually pay attention to driving better.
But I think honestly, from my perspective, it's gonna stay in this casual gaming where you play with your friends and do something short rather than hardcore gaming."
"Because I know that Sony is now bringing a feel out, a new car where you can play over the Internet.
But the problem is so many places in the world you don't have 5G connection at speeds that would allow really good experience."
"And also for us, we optimized all the games and had to figure out where the lag is so small that you don't actually notice that there is one.
Perfect. Andrej, thank you so much for your time."
