In a press release sent to GamingBolt, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has revealed that with the PS4 and Xbox One are on their way to cost American consumers $1 billion annually in electricity bills. Even more amazingly, $400 million of this electricity is consumed when the consoles are in standby mode.
The Xbox One, with Kinect on standby awaiting voice commands, is the biggest energy consumers among the three big consoles this generation. But the PS4 isn’t off the hook. Apparently, it’s inefficient controller charging wastes a lot of energy as well.
Pierre Delforge, NRDC director of high-tech energy efficiency, stated that, “Gamers shouldn’t be locked into higher electric bills for the lifetime of their consoles just because manufacturers haven’t optimized the performance of their products. This wastes energy and money, and causes unnecessary pollution from power plants.
“But if Microsoft and Sony follow NRDC’s recommendations, they could cut the new consoles’ electricity use by one-fourth beyond current projections through software and hardware optimizations, saving U.S. consumers $250 million on their annual utility bills and enough energy to power all the households in San Jose, America’s 10th largest city.”
According to the NRDC, once the PS4 and Xbox One replace all existing Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles – currently estimated to be 110 million in the US – they will consume 10 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, which will be enough to power the entire city of Houston.
Other findings from the NRDC revealed that the consoles consume more energy in standby mode in a year than when playing games; half of the Xbox One’s yearly consumption occurs in standby mode as Kinect awaits commands; and that the PS4 and Xbox One, both hyped for their media viewing capabilities, utilize 30 to 45 times more power to stream movies than Apple TV or Google Chromecast. Also, if all Xbox One users in the US used their consoles for watching TV, then annual electricity bills across the US would be $300 million.
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