5
Your Video Game Console Wastes Energy When You're Not Even Playing It
Sony
This one's going to sting a bit, so let's just grab the Band-Aid by the horns and rip that sumbitch clean off: By owning a video game console, you're killing the planet. You will be remembered as one of history's greatest monsters. And here's the kicker: It doesn't even matter if you use the damned thing.
The problem, as we've discussed before, has to do with vampire drain -- basically, the tendency of modern appliances to slurp electricity even when you're not using them. The newest round of game consoles are guilty of this, and in fact they take that shit to a whole new level, like some kind of super vampire. You know, like a video game boss.
Namco Bandai
"Why do you think the air looks like that?"
Most appliances that suck up energy in this fashion do so because they're never really turned off but rather in a constant sleep mode. Your video game console, on the other hand, sleeps with one eye open, listening to you. Always listening. With the move from the Xbox 360 to the Xbox One, for example, Microsoft transformed the Kinect from an utterly superfluous peripheral into an always-on device. This is ostensibly so you can power on the console by angrily shouting at it, but it also means the console is perpetually draining electricity. The PS4 isn't much better in this regard, with most users putting it into a "rest" mode that lets it download software updates and such overnight. In fact, all modern consoles have been shown to use more power per year while they're "off" than they do when they're actually being played.
How bad is it? Well, a report found that Xbox Ones and PS4s would combine forces in supervillainous harmony to dump 3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, thanks to energy usage that's two to three times that of previous-gen consoles. Oh, and that's only considering the units sold within the first two months of their release -- 8 million total -- not the over 55 million that have been sold to date. Go ahead and extrapolate those numbers if you feel like making Al Gore shit himself inside-out.
Paramount Classics
"Honestly, my lift doesn't go any higher."
497 Comments