In the past few years, you may not have paid attention to the amount of electricity consumed by certain household appliances, but since the explosive increase in energy prices, almost everyone is more careful.
Sometimes, however, the devices that consume the most electricity are ones that we wouldn’t even think about at first – for example, video game consoles also fall into this category, the use of which for four hours a day can add HUF 2.5-3 thousand to the utility bill per month, and HUF 34 thousand per year. Many people think that the solution is to take it back from playing, but this is only a half-truth, because most consoles do not turn off completely even in the “off” state.
Today’s modern consoles (such as the PlayStation 5 or the Xbox Series X|S) switch to a so-called rest mode after shutdown, from which they can wake up in a matter of seconds, so that the user can dive into various games without waiting – but few people know that it has a price.
As we mentioned, the consoles do not switch off completely in this state, they remain in operation in the background, and what’s more, in order to keep all the games and the system itself up to date, they even connect to the Internet, and at the same time, the electricity also consumed
Recently, Microsoft has come up with a new function, currently only available to beta testers, thanks to which the Xbox Series X|S and One consoles will use up to twenty times less energy after entering the resting state than before.
As it can be read in the update list, the update significantly reduces the power consumption of the console when it is switched off, so that the user actually does not notice anything, because the performance of the console and the gaming experience itself remain unchanged – what’s more, the console will still be able to download updates for the system, games and applications in the background.
A greener future by 2030
The update is part of Xbox’s efforts to reach a carbon-neutral, water-positive and zero-waste level by Microsoft 2030. As mentioned earlier by the Index reportedApple has already come up with a similar idea, the Cupertino company also promises that their operation will be completely carbon neutral by 2030, and they also guarantee that all Apple products will be charged with renewable energy by then – although they have not revealed that yet , how I want to do this.
In any case, Microsoft is also on an encouraging path towards a greener future, for example, in order to reduce their environmental footprint, they have reconsidered the design, construction, distribution and use processes of Xbox products, and they are trying to give players options that can reduce the impact of video games on the environment .
As we wrote, the update is currently only available to beta testers with Xbox Insider membership, but will soon arrive on all Xbox Series X|S and One machines. After switching to the new version, the energy saving function will automatically become the default setting, until then a Settings > General > Power Options menu item, you can manually adjust your console, because it already has a rest mode with reduced energy consumption – just not the newly announced, redesigned edition.
