Family card game favourite Uno is coming to a BMW screen near you.
The in-car version of the game is now available to Australian BMW customers.
Developed in 1971, Uno is the number one selling card game in the world.
Uno Car Party! made its global debut for in-car gaming last week in Cologne, Germany at Gamescom 2024, the world’s foremost video game event.
It has since rolled out via the AirConsole platform to more than 500,000 BMW and MINI vehicles over-the-air – including in Australia.
There’s just one problem.
You can only play the game when the car is in park with the handbrake on which kind of defeats the purpose, don’t you think?
Up to four people can play at a time, but frankly we’re struggling to imagine a scenario where four people would find themselves in a parked BMW with nothing better to do?
“We continue to increase the value of the overall digital experience for our customers,” BMW’s Stephan Durach said.
“Our partners AirConsole and Mattel are helping make in-car gaming into a new social experience, and I am thrilled to offer a family-favourite game like Uno for this exciting innovation.”
Uno Car Party! is a collaboration between Mattel, AirConsole and BMW Group.
Since 2022, the partnership between the BMW Group and AirConsole has been pioneering in-car gaming, bringing intuitive and innovative gameplay to BMW vehicles through the AirConsole platform.
Its selection of games has grown since the introduction of AirConsole, with popular games such as “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”, which launched as an in-car world premiere in collaboration between Sony Pictures Television, the BMW Group and AirConsole.
In Australia, AirConsole is available in vehicles running BMW Operating System 8.5 and an embedded personal eSIM.
It is not available with BMW 2 Series Coupé, 3 Series or 4 Series.
The game Uno has an interesting history.
It was originally developed in 1971 by Merle Robbins in Reading, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati.
Played with a specially printed deck, the game is derived from the crazy eights family of card games which, in turn, is based on the traditional German game of mau-mau.
When his family and friends began to play more and more, Robbins and his family mortgaged their home to raise $8000 to have 5000 copies of the game made.
He sold it from his barbershop at first, then local businesses began to sell it as well.
Robbins later sold the rights to a group of friends headed by Robert Tezak, a funeral parlour owner in Joliet, Illinois, for $50,000 plus royalties of 10 cents per game.
Tezak formed International Games, Inc., to market Uno, with offices behind his funeral parlour.
In 1992, International Games became part of the Mattel family of companies.
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