Microsoft wants to turn your car into an Xbox, too. Not content just to stream Game Pass to your TV, laptop, or smartphone, it’s also aiming to beam hits like Forza Horizon 5 directly into your Kia Sportage. Microsoft and LG announced a new partnership on Tuesday to bring Xbox Cloud Gaming to over 20 million internet-connected vehicles by 2030. Who’s ready to play The Elder Scrolls 6 in the back of their Uber?
“Our work with LG is the latest example of Xbox expanding to new places, building on partnerships that already bring Xbox Cloud Gaming to mobile devices, PCs, and TVs,” Xbox marketing VP Christopher Lee said in a blog post. “By adding vehicles to the mix, we’re giving players more choice than ever in how they enjoy their games.”
The initiative only pertains to EVs that support LG’s webOS Automotive Content Platform (ACP) which at this point is primarily Kia and mostly not in the U.S. But LG exec Eun Seok-hyun is promising there will be 20 million of these vehicles on the road somewhere in the next five years. Whether that includes the country where Microsoft is headquartered or not will depend on whether Congress ever revives the electric vehicle tax credit program it recently killed. Otherwise anyone who wants to make their car into an Xbox will have to do it the old-fashioned way.
Xbox’s recent pivot to being hardware-agnostic comes as it’s developing dedicated gaming OS layers for Windows on PC handhelds and bringing more of its exclusives to PS5 and Switch 2. It’s unclear if that will move the needle much on the overall growth of Game Pass, which hasn’t announced new subscriber numbers in over a year. This new campaign to turn cars into Xboxes comes just as Microsoft announces a mandatory return to the office for all employees within a 50-mile radius of its Redmond campus. Now they’ll have something new to do while sitting in traffic, at least eventually.
