Have a phone? You’ve got an in-vehicle game controller, too. . .

By Gary S. Vasilash

One of the features that some OEMs have offered in vehicles, once to help deal with bored kids, now to reduce the level of fidgeting among those who grew up playing video games and now find themselves spending too much time in their vehicles not going anywhere (perhaps waiting to pickup the aforementioned kids from school), is video games.

One of the issues that some of those deployments present is a vexing one: the game controllers have a tendency to do what happens to plenty of things in vehicles: disappear or break, and not necessarily in that order.

So Volkswagen AG (not Volkswagen of America), working with a Swiss company named “N-Dream,” is offering the N-Dream AirConsole gaming platform to its vehicles.

What’s notable about this is AirConsole uses smartphones as controllers.

The vehicle’s infotainment screen becomes the game console.

It is easy to pair the phones with the system: when the AirConsole app is opened a QR code appears on the screen. Scan it and it is ready to go.

Multiple players can participate in a given game.

However, play can only occur when the vehicle is in Park.

VW AG will begin offering AirConsole next month in the ID.7, ID.5, ID.4, ID.3 (from ID. software 4.0), the new Passat, the new Tiguan, the new Golf, and the new Golf Estate.

Odd are that this will make its way to this side of the Atlantic before too long.