Carmakers park in digital living room

[Jared Moya]

DETROIT--Get in the driver's seat. Adjust the rearview mirror. Boot up the Xbox 360.


To some young drivers, a car that's also a video game system may sound like a dream come true--or so Nissan Motor hopes with a new concept car aimed at gamers.


Nissan's Urge sports car, introduced at the North American International Auto Show here this week, is a prototype where the steering wheel and pedals become game controllers when the car is still. The mirror conceals a small flip-down screen. The dashboard conceals a Microsoft game console.


The Urge may be one of the more extreme examples of a trend to introduce more entertainment features to help differentiate a vehicle in a crowded marketplace, especially to a generation used to mobile phones and portable music players like iPods.


To serve those plugged-in drivers, more carmakers are turning their vehicles into entertainment centers. High-end features like navigation systems and backseat video monitors can add as much as $2,200 to the cost of a car, according to J.D. Power and Associates.

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[Auggie2k]

Problem with electronics in cars and such, the depreciate too damn quickly because of the rate of change of technology.

LOL I actually typed in rate of change of velocity in first - The really cram them definitions into you in school.

[Jared Moya]

Llllolool......thats a funny thought, as say you have a car for 5, 6 years, not that long really, you'd probably atill have a SNES in your car at the rate that video game console systems change and are updated......

[kokanezub]

nes..to old how bout sega genieses lol
i swear i got an nes in my basment.snes,genises,n64 ps1 and game cube