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| Video game consoles waste $1 billion in energy, not! |
| by Mike Bantick | |
| Friday, 21 November 2008 | |
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Page 1 of 2 A report has been released blaming gamers for a US1$billion waste in electricity via their beloved consoles. But checking out the report further highlights a gross assumption.The report titled “Lowering the Cost of Play: Improving the Energy Efficiency of Video Game Consoles” states that the 40 percent (is it only that much?) of households that are running a video game console, are responsible for racking up an estimated 16 billion kilowatt hours of energy use per year. This equates to the annual electricity use of San Diego. The Nintendo Wii comes out – as expected – as the shining example of energy conservation when stacked up to its current generation brethren. The Wii uses one seventh the power of a Sony PlayStation 3 and one ninth that of the Microsoft Xbox 360 during game play. In the report concludes with a statement “We must ensure that the next generations of consoles use less power than their predecessors, even while offering more features. In order to significantly reduce video game console energy consumption...” Then there is a call for game manufacturers, game designers and other gaming advocates to make a stand and start a rolling out an awareness campaign to consumers, encouraging them to be wiser about their gaming power consumption. The NRDC suggest that; “Through the incorporation of more userfriendly power management features on gaming consoles we could save approximately 11 billion kWh of electricity per year, cut our nation’s electricity bill by more than $1 billion per year, and avoid emissions of more than 7 million tons of CO2 each year.” Publishers and manufactures should cooperate to develop standard auto-save features in games similar to those used in computer software. It is at this point that the validity of the dire warnings in the report begins to sound like so much hot air. So what could be wrong with a group advocating a mind-set switch for the good of the Earth’s environment? Nothing, except the gross assumptions made in the report. Continued on PAGE 2 |
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