Xbox One Wastes More Power Than Any Other New Console, Says NRDC

SCEA didn’t immediately comment. Microsoft declined to comment, deferring to the Entertainment Software Association for reaction. Though ESA was reviewing the NRDC report, its “preliminary reaction is that it doesn’t present a complete picture of game console energy efficiency,” ESA said in a statement Monday. Console makers “designed the latest generation of consoles to deliver the experience gamers want while minimizing overall energy consumption,” it said. The three console makers have “long demonstrated a commitment” to reducing energy consumption and the launch versions of the newest consoles “consume less energy in all modes than the preceding generation did at launch,” despite adding new features, it said.

The latest-generation game consoles are “on track” to cost American consumers $1 billion annually in utility bills -- $400 million of that in standby mode when no one is using them -- and they consume enough electricity to power all the homes in Houston, the U.S.’s fourth-largest city, NRDC said in the report, released Friday and posted on its website (http://bit.ly/1lEiZKW).

The new consoles “incorporated important energy-saving features, in large part at NRDC’s urging,” it said. The consoles offer “better power scaling and well-implemented” automatic power-down to a low-power state after an extended period of user inactivity, it said. But the expanded capabilities of the PS4 and Xbox One resulted in annual electricity consumption two to three times higher than the most recent models of their predecessors, said NRDC. In comparison, the Wii U is an “energy sipper,” it said.

The PS4 and Xbox One “gobble” more energy in standby mode and when showing videos than when playing games over a year, NRDC estimated. The Xbox One draws less power than the PS4 in the on-mode, but Microsoft’s console consumes much more energy than the competitor box when not in use, in the connected standby mode, said NRDC. Nearly 50 percent of the Xbox One’s annual energy consumption occurs when no one is using it, but the system is still listening for users to say “Xbox On,” even when no one is home, it said. If all U.S. Xbox One owners were to use their consoles for TV watching, it would add $300 million to their yearly energy bills, it said. In the TV viewing mode, the Xbox One is used in addition to a set-top box to access cable or satellite TV, adding 72 watts to TV viewing, it said. Consumer Electronics Daily asked Microsoft late last year how much power the console was consuming when we were just viewing TV, shortly after we hooked our cable box up the Xbox One, which required the console to be on when viewing TV (CED Dec 10 p4). Microsoft replied at the time: “We designed Xbox One from the ground up to maximize computational power per watt. We have a scalable architecture, which means it uses only the computing capacity needed for a task. When it’s ready to respond to ‘Xbox On’ it uses about 15 watts, and in its lowest power state, Xbox One uses only a 1/2-watt. At the dashboard, Xbox One consumes approximately the same amount of power” as the Xbox 360 did.

The PS4 and Xbox One use 30-45 times more power to stream a movie than do dedicated media players such as Apple TV or Google Chromecast, said NRDC. ESA in 2011 termed “unreasonable” NRDC’s comparison of the energy profile of a device meant for one function like media playback with the energy use of the “same function by a multipurpose device optimized for a different predominant purpose” like games.

The current designs of the PS4 and Xbox One will waste energy and money, and cause “unnecessary pollution” from power plants, said Pierre Delforge, NRDC director-high-tech energy efficiency, whose team did the testing. But if Microsoft and Sony follow NRDC’s recommendations, they could cut the new consoles’ electricity use 25 percent below 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, he said in a news release.

NRDC recommended that: Microsoft reduce Xbox One power draw when in connected standby with voice command enabled; Sony reduce PS4 power draw in standby with USB ports live (when no device is charging); Microsoft reduce Xbox One TV-mode power, and give users the option to watch TV when the console is off or in a very low-power state; both companies reduce video streaming power to levels closer to that of a dedicated video player; and Microsoft allow users to opt out of “Instant On” and voice-command features in the Xbox One’s out-of-the-box setup menu, so they use this “high-energy-consumptive mode only if they choose to,” said NRDC.

Testing was done on launch units of the new consoles with system updates up to mid-April, said NRDC. The report didn’t reflect the effects of any system updates and hardware improvements released after that date, it said.

About 110 million game consoles have been sold in the U.S. since 2005, almost enough to have one in every home, and they “consume several power plants’ worth” of electricity each year, said NRDC. Once all prior generation consoles are replaced, the new models collectively will use about 10 billion kilowatt hours of electricity annually, it said.