| Video game consoles waste $1 billion in energy, not! |
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| by Mike Bantick | |
| Friday, 21 November 2008 | |
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The most glaringly obvious assumption made by the NRDC in its headline catching report is that of the gamer activity profile. The massive bow that is drawn is that 50 percent of the household gaming machines are never switched off! The assumption being, that because of bad game design, laziness, incorrect use of console power saving features and perhaps ignorance, consoles are not even being switched to stand-by power after use. This assumption in my experience is just wildly inaccurate. On game design, there are indeed a number of games on the market whose, checkpoint system or save game options can be a little frustrating (LEGO games, I am looking at you), requiring a dedicated (and possibly time consuming) amount of gaming to get to a satisfactory point, then save the game. I know of nobody – in 25 years of gaming experience – that are not aware of the issues facing this world and would deliberately leave gaming consoles running 24/7. Sure there is the occasional reason to get that lengthy download completed, but even then the consoles are prominent in their option to shutdown once the download is compete. It is a big jump, the report does not adequately qualify, that at any one time, half the gaming consoles in the world are left powered fully on for a majority of the day. The Sony PS3 Folding@home contribution being one example where this figure could be inflated, but fifty percent! I don’t think so. Even in the reports own body it shows that manufactures are addressing this issue, with the post 2007 revisions of both PS3 and Xbxo 360 showing significant savings in power usage. So this ideal is obviously already on the radar of manufactures.  Other than switching the power switch at the wall, consumers have other convenient ways to conserve energy on home entertainment equipment. Products such as the Universal Tricklestar automatically shutting down and restoring power to devices, provide a no-brainer for energy conscious yet slightly lazy digital entertainment fans. The NRDC report is almost a waste of energy unto itself; it does achieve discussion on the issues of power saving, which is helpful, reinforcing the need for conservation. But to believe all of the figures and profiling as presented is a leap of faith not backed up by the assumptions made in the paper. |
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