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The Next-Gen Consoles and Power Consumption
Ant writes "This HardCOREware review reports that the current video game console war takes an interesting twist as the power consumption levels of each of the three new consoles (Nintendo Wii, Sony Playstation 3 (PS3), and Microsoft Xbox 360) were explored. Video game playback, DVD playback, and other console functions were tested. One of the most interesting stats were the console idle power usage: 'Wii - 1.3 watts, Wii (Connect 24 On) - 9.6 watts, Xbox 360 - 2.5 watts, PlayStation 3 - 1.9 watts. Nothing significant here; you're looking at spending about $0.20 USD a month to keep the PS3 plugged in, which isn't much. The Wii requires 10 Watts to run Connect24 (which will connect to Nintendo's online service and notify you of system updates) racking up a cost of about $1 a month which is nothing too significant, but still about 5X more than if it were just turned off. Turn Connect24 off, and it's back down to normal.'"
Aren't those consoles (Wii, PS3, 360) the current-gen consoles.
If they are the next-gen consoles, wouldn't we be calling the next iteration of consoles the next-next-gen?
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
Why has Nintendo made it MANDATORY to keep wiiconnect24 turned on if you want to use features like the news or weather channel? Is it so hard for them to let you download the data immediately when you access it?
And why does wiiconnect24 have to draw so much power? The thing will connect to the internet every 3 minutes or so! Why can't it just check for updates about once an hour, then go into full standby the rest of the time?
It looks like the Wii is shaping up to be the most popular console of this generation. It's a shame that there will be so many millions of Wiis constantly sucking down about 10x as much power as they really need to. I think it's great and all that it uses such low power when in actual use, but the amount used on standby is inexcusable in my opinion.