In shockingly shocking news, a report has been published which suggests that if you turn your console off after using it, you will actually save energy. Yes, it sounds thoroughly crazy, but these people are experts!
"If you leave your Xbox 360 or Sony PlayStation 3 on all the time, you can cut your electric bill by as much as $100 a year simply by turning it off when you are finished playing," wildly claims this revolutionary report. "With so many struggling in today’s economy – it’s important to realize there are simple steps gamers can take to lower their energy costs. And if manufacturers make future systems more energy efficient, they’ll be doing the right thing for consumers’ pockets, for our clean energy future, and for the environment."
Sarcasm aside, the general message of the report is that consoles waste energy and are expensive to run, which is a fair enough assessment. The Playtation 3 is the worst offender, sucking up 150 watts per hour when active. The 360 is next with 119, and as usual the Wii is a goody-goody teacher's pet crawly bumlick darling with only 16 watts.
So there you go. If you want to save money, stop everything you are doing! Also, hit the jump for even more handy tips that you as gamers could learn from.
- watching a movie on your PS3 consumers 5 times the power of using a stand-alone Blu-Ray player
- average annual energy cost for a launch model (2006) PS3 user is $160
- the 2007 PS3 is more efficient: annual cost is $134
- For launch (2006) Xbox 360 users, it's $143; drops to $103 for 2007 models (GP: less RROD as well!!)
- it costs $10 per year to operate a Wii
- the game industry and game media should encourage console owners to use auto power-down features built into the 360 and PS3
- the next hardware generation should be more efficient and have auto-power down
- an auto-save feature should preserve game progress when the system auto-powers down
- controllers should have a "sleep" button
Jim Sterling serves as reviews editor for Destructoid.com, head of the Podtoid podcast, and produces a number of news stories, original features, one-of-a-kind videos. With his passionate argumentative style, controversial opinions, harsh delivery, and dedication to brutal honesty Sterling is a name that you can't help but recognize.
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Contest:
7:20 PM on 11.19.2008
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Crazy shit. Flipside though is that my rent is 6X cheaper. Suck it.
Do they not want me to cure cancer?
[/sarcasm]
Energy Star standards for saving energy on console is an addition that's welcome, unless they won't put the lame energy star logo on the console's bootup screens. (the way they did it with pc's)
Also:
Also, "watts per hour" is meaningless. It's just "watts".
hm...sorry kittehs
"The Playtation 3 is the worst offender, sucking up 150 watts per hour when active."
Oh I get it now. Nevermind.
Might pick up a standalone blue ray player though as 5x the power consumption is a big ouch.
My PC is going to get cheaper to run since Im changing my five year old CRT for am LCD. The PC uses a lot of power for the graphic card, but you only drain power when you are gaming.
probably if the hard drive is being accessed, the blu-ray drive is spinning as fast as it can, and wireless is being used
I would hope that the ps3/360 aren't drawing that much power constantly...of course they ARE little computers so I guess that's not surprising either
:(
I wouldn't even watch DVDs on my 360 for fear of RRoD, so I think I saved plenty of cash there.
Also noone would ever leave the 360 on 24/7 because even with the new update it's still too noisy to leave it on if you don't need it.
Now for some calculating:
360: 119 watts = 0,119 kwh
24h/day 365days/year
that leads to: 0.119kw/h x 24h x365 = 1042.44 kw/h
1 kw/h in Germany usually costs about 0.20 USD. seeing that we pay unbelievable taxes for energy it's probably even cheaper in the US but even with the 0.20 USD we end up with
1042.44 kw/h x 0.20 USD = [b]208.49 USD
Keep in mind that this is the amount of money that it would cost you if you had your console running 24/7 for a full year.[/b]
We can disregard the amount of additional energy consumed by your TV because the value asigned to the Wii clearly shows that they did not factor that into their equation.
That means that to pay as much for the energy consumption of your 360 as they are claiming in hear you would have to play at least 12 hours per day using the more efficient model.
Even when you only play 6 hours a day which for most gamers is a lot, you would only have to pay about 50 bucks.
which means that they really calculated the 24/7 power usage.
Therefore 12 hour usage/day now costs about 57 USD
and the "normal" 6h use costs you a measly 28 USD
We all know the Wii has cube insides that are not very powerfull, the xbox and PS3 are like proper PC's they are bound to draw alot more energy!!
This is why i have a seperate blu ray player, what dick watches movies on their console?? Degrades the life of it and draws ALOT more power!!
what if you live in a house full of speed freaks and they play your console 24 hours a day
By not releasing any games worth turning on the Wii.
Oh, snap!