At both the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and in a recent post to their website, Nvidia announced that their game streaming service GeForce Now will be coming to cars. The company announced they were partnering with a number of auto manufacturers such as BYD, Polestar and Hyundai Motor Group to offer it as an entertainment option in these company’s range of electric vehicles.

President of BYD and CEO of BYD America, Stella Li “We are excited to offer our customers the best in technology, comfort, design from BYD and now the latest in gaming through NVIDIA GeForce NOW high-performance cloud gaming service. The experience of driving our cars is becoming increasingly sophisticated, entertaining and sustainable.”

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It’s not necessarily that we’ll suddenly see people playing games on the go as a standard in cars. Nvidia GeForce NOW is still contingent on players having a fast internet connection, so it’s unlikely that in a car it will be any different. However, it does represent a major step forward by other auto manufacturers to compete with the kind of unusual entertainment options offered by companies such as Tesla, who also offered games playable on their onboard computers.

It’s also telling that this is mainly being offered in electric vehicles. Much as smartphones represent a major step forward in computing power available in your phone, electric vehicles are being billed as ‘cars of the future’ to an extent. By offering a great deal more value for money, not just with green energy but with various perks to owning an electric car, manufacturers are angling to capture more of the auto market.

With some pointing to streaming as being the future of gaming, it will likely be vindicating to see auto manufacturers adopt these sorts of additions to their cars. However, for some mobile developers whose games could be played natively on these systems, it may feel as if they are being sidestepped somewhat.