Most Game Console Power Draw Comes From Time Spent Idling 249
hypnosec writes "Springer Science and Business Media has discovered that during 2010, almost 70 per cent of the overall power draw of the world's consoles was thanks to idling. This total came to over 10.8 TWh of energy, equating to well over a billion dollars in wasted power. The biggest culprit for the trio of main consoles of this generation was the PlayStation 3, with its first edition having an active power draw of 180 watts and an idling draw of 167. As the report states, the Xbox 360 wasn't much better however, with active/idle draws of 172/162w respectively. Both of those consoles have got far better with their hardware revisions, more than halving the idle power consumption, but the Wii has been ahead of the curve the whole time. Its active/idle power draws were as low as 16/11w. The only real difference with the Nintendo console was whether its WC24 was enabled or not. With it on, standby power jumped from 2w to 9w."
Re:Switch (Score:3, Interesting)
Too bad... (Score:3, Interesting)
we can't do something like this [makeuseof.com] with our gaming consoles, when they are idle.
Re:What is the point of gaming consoles? (Score:5, Interesting)
many of them target every major console and non-console platform these days.
Many AAA games come out on consoles first. They may or may not come out later on PC and when they do the PC versions that seem like an afterthought (poorly optimised, poor controller configuration options etc). Of course at the time of the console release there is usually no indication as to whether or not a PC version will come out later.
What exactly is the purpose of gaming consoles today?
When a game developer targets a console they will generally design their game to run well on that console. So if I buy a console early in it's generation I can be reasonablly confident that new games (with a few exceptions from shitty developers) will continue to run well on that console through it's lifecycle. Reviewers will be using the same hardware specs as players will so if a game plays well on the reviewers system it will play well for users too.
With PC gaming it's far more of a crapshoot, yes the graphics etc can be better than consoles but if your hardware specs aren't high enough the experience can be a lot worse. Furthermore neither CPU or GPU vendors label their products in a way that makes it easy for the customer to determine whether his CPU/GPU is better or worse than the one a reviewer used.
Oh and most PC games now have some form of online activation which often includes anti-resale measures (at the very least you don't know if the previous owner has posted the key somewhere online that could result in it being blacklisted). Console games can for the most part still be resold (some console games are starting to make DLC and/or online multiplayer access free for the original owner and chargable for subsequent owners but i've not yet seen a console game where the main single player game can't be resold).
Re:What is the point of gaming consoles? (Score:4, Interesting)
My machine has enough RAM and GPU to run Black Ops, but the CPU is too slow, gotta upgrade the CPU if I want to play it. Wouldn't have to do that with a console.
Yes you would - the requirements are just more coarse-grained. You'd have to upgrade your PS2 to a PS3, or X-Box to X-Box360. And really, if you buy middle-tier graphics cards/CPUs when you build a computer, you're likely to get almost a console generation worth of time out of them before really being compelled to upgrade (if you're willing to accept lower graphics settings on recent games, which are still likely to be better than a console).