(Jake Turcotte)
Is your game console running? Better go catch it.
By Andrew Heining | 11.25.08
Video game fan? You may not be as green as you think.
A report out Tuesday found that the Playstation 3 (PS3) and XBox 360, if left on all the time, can consume as much energy over a year as two new refrigerators.
The paper released by the National Resources Defense Council charted increased sales of gaming consoles, measured the individual systems’ power use, and looked at average playing habits to come up with some pretty eye-popping conclusions. Among them:
• US video game consoles use an estimated 16 billion kilowatt-hours per year – roughly equal to the annual electricity use of the city of San Diego.
• More than 40 percent of US households now contain at least one video game console.
• The Nintendo Wii costs heavy users just $10 a year to run. Similar use of the XBox 360 and PS3 can annually cost close to $150.
Most consoles now include a power-saving auto shut-off feature, but such features are often buried in hard-to-find settings menus, and are off by default. Compounding consoles’ power-hungry ways, the report said, are games that don’t allow users to save their progress, causing some players to leave them on all the time.
To remedy these problems, the report recommends that manufacturers include an automatic power-down feature in new consoles that reduces energy consumption after one to three hours of idle time. Also on the list of recommendations is a sleep button on game controllers, and more efficient processor design.
One of the major selling points of next-generation gaming consoles is their ability to do more than just play games. Consoles now can be used as internet devices, media storage centers, and high-definition movie disc players.
The PS3 is often referenced as a best buy, because of its ability not only to play games, but to play Blu-ray discs as well. But that multitasking comes at a cost: The report found that when playing a Blu-ray disc, a Playstation 3 uses more than five times the power of a standalone Sony Blu-ray player. Zap! And neither the PS3 nor the Xbox 360 offers any power management features to the user related to movie play.
With all this rampant power consumption, maybe it’s time for video games to take a cue from the mobile phone charger industry. The world’s top-five cell phone makers on Wednesday launched a ratings system to help buyers decipher the most efficient chargers for their devices.
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2. NCPLH Personal License | 11.26.08
Comment from http://www.aabtraining.co.uk/ncplh.htm
I love how people sit around and write reports all the time…today this food is good for you, tomorrow it kills you, perfect example was a few days ago on the radio where about a week appart they said that taking paracetomol (spell check broken) is good for your heart and can lead to a longer life and the next week they said it can cause internal bleeding…
I never leave my PS3 on and I do watch dvds ocasionaly on it, however maybe what we should all do is turn off everything and live in a cave again, perhaps that is the way to save the world.
Now lets be honest here, we are not really looking to save the world are we?
the world will be here long after we have vanished, maybe we are just trying to save ourselves…from ourselves and that my friends is just not possible, so buckle up and enjoy!
NCPLH personal license training courses are now being run UK wide to help individuals and companies comply with licensing law.
3. Brian | 11.26.08
$150 dollars a year translates to 20 hours a day at 200 Watts power consumption (full load for both Xbox 360 and PS3) with a price of $.08 per kilowatt-hour.
This isn’t a realistic statistic.
A more realistic statistic:
14 hours a day at Load, 10 hours at Standby, which would account for 12 hours of gameplay and 2 hours of misc. usage (downloading updates, playing music, watching a movie, etc…) which translates to $78.84 for heavy users, a cost of about $7 a month.
Factor in consumption for an 32″ LCD TV at 140 Watts for 12 of those hours and you are at $120 a year.
Standby power consumption is, by comparison, negligible at ~3 watts for PS3 and Xbox 360.
Sitting at a computer with a CRT monitor for 8 hours a day (aka… work) would consume close to the same amount of power.
4. Home Energy Auditor | 12.02.08
The report (if anyone bothers to read it) references game systems that are turned on 24/7, as a worst case scenario. It also uses .10 cents/KWH, which is actually low compared to our current local rates.
It is interesting to note how the newer versions of the consoles use less power. Most of the power savings comes from the quest to lower production costs for each console: less or smaller chips = less cost = less power, very roughly.. I believe the newest Xbox 360 that uses the new 60nm GPU chip (Jasper) wasn’t included in this test. Also, the xbox CPU is slated to go to a 45nm process soon, too. The PS3’s power savings between revisions comes from a CPU process change to 65nm, and the removal of the ‘emotion engine’ chip used to play PS2 games.
Oh, and #2: yes, I am actually working to try and save the world, one home at a time.
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7. Is your game console running? Better go catch it. (The Christian Science Monitor) | discontinuedgames.com | 11.26.08
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1. J Canada | 11.25.08
“And neither the PS3 nor the Xbox 360 offers any power management features to the user related to movie play” I am not sure how true this still is.
I have an XBox360 Pro, I use it to play movies, once the movie is complete, it will turn to a low power mode, further to this it will turn it self off it you do not start the movie again overtime.