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.'"

Comments

While in use...

[wframe9109]

Odd summary... You point out the part that admits it's not nearly as interesting as usage stats... Wii: 18 Watts XBox 360: 185 Watts PS3: 193 Watts PC: 198 Watts Who wants to take bets on which console Gore is backing!

Re:While in use...

[UbuntuDupe]

Well, now that you mention it...

Why not ban the PS3? After all, it's wasteful, since (like with incandescents) human enjoyment of PS3s either:

a) counts for nothing
b) can be outright denied (mindmelds FTW)
c) does not currently replace some other, more wasteful energy use, or
d) has such a high environmental impact not even a huge tax could outweight the SEVERE HARMS of using it.

Right? Is that right out of the "ban incandescents" playbook?

Re:While in use...

[faloi]

Who wants to take bets on which console Gore is backing!

I'll tell you after I find out how much money each company donates to his campaign.

Re:While in use...

[evwah]

some peoples' PCs (such as mine):
500 watts

Re:While in use...

[maynard]

What campaign is that?

Re:While in use...

[rlp]

> Who wants to take bets on which console Gore is backing!

Checkers by candle light?

Re:While in use...

[Marcos Eliziario]

Your power supply is rated 500W, it doesn't mean you're using 500W. The most energy-hungry item in your computer is the CPU, which uses at most 130W, then, it comes the GPU and hard drives, in the worst cases the sum of it all would be no more than 250W. The reason you have a 500W power supply, is that usually, in order to increase stability and safety, it's a good practice to load power supplies well below their rated max output. Unless, of course, you have a SMP machine with 2 or 4 cpus (cpus, not cores in the same chip), but in that case, your supplies probably would be rated 750W or 1000W.

Re:While in use...

[Marcos Eliziario]

Your power supply is rated 500W, it doesn't mean you're using 500W. The most energy-hungry item in your computer is the CPU, which uses at most 130W, then, it comes the GPU and hard drives, in the worst cases the sum of it all would be no more than 250W. The reason you have a 500W power supply, is that usually, in order to increase stability and safety, it's a good practice to load power supplies well below their rated max output. Unless, of course, you have a SMP machine with 2 or 4 cpus (cpus, not cores in the same chip), but in that case, your supplies probably would be rated 750W or 1000W.

Two things

[AKAImBatman]

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.

There are two things that consumers need to be aware of about these items:

1. The Wii's power usage when turned on is only a few watts more. So if you play your consoles, the cost of using WiiConnect24 is going to be significantly less than the cost of regularly using your PS3.

2. If you really don't want the Wii to standby, you can do a full shutdown at any time by holding down the power button. If you hold it down for long enough, the light should turn red. That means that the Wii is full off. This also works for the rare circumstances in which the Wii crashes. (Most commonly seen in the beta of the Opera Web Browser.)

Re:Two things

[Neon Spiral Injector]

If it is illuminating a red light, it can't be "full off". The original PS2 had a switch on the back, that totally cut its power.

Re:Two things

[Anonymous Coward]

you can do a full shutdown at any time by holding down the power button. If you hold it down for long enough,

I know this sounds radical, but with lots of devices I hear if you pull that cord that goes to the wall outlet, the power consumption drops amazingly. You don't have to learn any weird power off tricks either.

Re:Two things

[AKAImBatman]

Do you consider your television to be "off" when you press the power switch? That's the exact same state as the Wii is in. It barely trickles power in that state. If you want your electronics to be in a powerless mode (fairly unnatural for modern electronics) you need to either find the cutoff switch (like on the PS2 or the power supply of most PCs) or pull the plug.

Re:Two things

[Neon Spiral Injector]

I make the distinction that my TV and DVD player are in standby. At least my DVD player has a full off switch on the front. You are correct that I can't keep my TV from drawing power unless I unplug it. But doing that makes it lose the TV Guide data, so at least it is doing something with the power.

Re:Two things

[fistfullast33l]

The PS3 has this switch too...I use it if the web browser crashes occasionally (usually loading some insanely flashed or image hungry site).

Re:Two things

[kannibal_klown]

Do you consider your television to be "off" when you press the power switch? That's the exact same state as the Wii is in. It barely trickles power in that state. If you want your electronics to be in a powerless mode (fairly unnatural for modern electronics)

TVs available in Europe can by turned fully off via a button on the front. So they have the option of doing a soft-off like we're used to in the states or going all-out.

Re:Two things

[brkello]

So the red light stays on magically not using any power...that's pretty cool :P

Re:Two things

[OldeTimeGeek]

The PS3 has the same switch that the PS2 had. Same place, too.

Re:Two things

[miyako]

I've noticed that both the Wii and the Xbox 360 seem to crash way more often than a console should. I've had the Wii crash probably 5 or 6 times since I've had it- which seems really excessive to me. The 360 has crashed mid-game maybe two dozen times- most of those after the fall patch that caused games to freeze up randomly- but about half the time the 360 won't boot up properly and I have to turn it off and boot it back up again to get the damned thing to turn on.
Haven't had any trouble with the PS3 crashing yet, although I did have a couple of problems with downloading psone games onto the PSP through the playstation store (of course that turned out to actually be a problem with the memory stick in the PSP- which I guess is still sonys fault, but not a software problem, which is the topic of this discussion).
I don't care for the trend of Consoles getting treated more like PCs in this generation, with software updates and patches and things crashing.

Re:Two things

[FiloEleven]

But doing that makes it lose the TV Guide data, so at least it is doing something with the power. So is Wii. Granted, right now it's mostly Miis wandering to and from your system or the occasional update, but if Nintendo's talk is to be believed it will become an often-used content delivery system.

Re:Two things

[Professor_UNIX]

I've noticed that both the Wii and the Xbox 360 seem to crash way more often than a console should.

I've only seen my Wii crash once in the month I've had it... if I can even call it a crash. The blue light on the DVD drive was flashing slowly on and off which I guess means there's some update available, but it wouldn't turn on with the remote. I had to go over and hold down the power button and it reset. I've never seen it crash in a game though.

Re:Two things

[JFMulder]

Actually, my Sony tube TV when turned off consumes 0 watt according to a Kill-a-watt. So either it's using to little that it's not registering or it's really completely off.

As for my Scientific Atlanta HD PVR, it consumes as much power on as off, recording or not. Go figure.

Re:Two things

[Blakey Rat]

I think Xbox crashes are mostly software-related. I had one freeze playing Gears of War, and so far 3 freezes playing Viva Pinata, but with all other games I've never noticed a glitch. Both of those games auto-save pretty frequently, so it wasn't a major problem, but it's still very annoying and I hope MS beefs up their QA process for future titles.

(I think the makers of Viva Pinata recognized it's tendency to freeze... it auto-saves all the freakin' time.)

Re:Two things

[AKAImBatman]

From what I understand, many of the in-game crashes are actually caused by the Wii being unable to handle a loss of wireless connectivity while playing a game. So you may want to ensure that your Wii is within a good range of your access point, and that you're using the channel that gets the best reception.

My Wii is sitting about 5 inches above the access point, so the only time it crashes is when I mess up the setInterval() in my Javascript code. ;D

Re:Two things

[miyako]

I get a fairly strong signal in the living room where I have the Wii set up. It seems more to get stuck when there is a lot of traffic. My ISP throttles bandwidth horribly, so if I have bittorrent or something running the bandwidth and latency go to crap (strangely enough this seems to happen even when I have KTorrent set to only connect using encryption). If I try to connect with the Wii, it will get stuck- even if I go and kill Bittorrent it will just sit there, like it tries to connect once, times out, and then just sits there not knowing what to do.

Re:Two things

[miyako]

I've had a few software related crashes on the 360 (including a really strange one in Oblivion where I managed to find a seam in the level or clipping got broken momentarily or something, and I ended up "outside" of the level, with no way to get back "inside") but the vast majority of problems with the 360 are just booting it up. At least 1/3rd of the time booting up the system will simply error out and leave me with an error screen and a red light on the power button ring thing. Rebooting the system fixes it. I find it extremely annoying, but I'm not sure what else I would expect really comming from a Microsoft product.

Re:Two things

[MaverickUW]

Residual Charge?

I mean, ever had a motherboard with a little LED on it letting you know it's getting power. If you unplug the computer, it doesn't go off that exact second. You either wait a minute, or you hit the power button, which drains out the residual charge (though probably isn't good for the system). So yes, it could theoretically do it

Re:Two things

[kannibal_klown]

Fully off, as in, you can't turn it back on with a remote control? If you can use a remote control to turn it on, it isn't all the way off.

Correct, the button on the front turns it full off to the point that not even the remote turns it back on.

I don't know how common this feature is, but for a while I thought I'd broken the TV when I was staying at a place in Switzerland. I knew the owner, and they'd said they'd only bought it a couple of years ago (so 2002, 2003?) and it had this feature. I guess it's for the owner that wants to minimize power usage while they're out.

Re:Two things

[trdrstv]

Actually, my Sony tube TV when turned off consumes 0 watt according to a Kill-a-watt. So either it's using to little that it's not registering or it's really completely off.

Little Scientific test. If it responds to your remote control to power on, then it isn't completely off.

Re:Two things

[JFMulder]

Okay well... hum.. yeah. Silly me. :)

I was more thinking in the line of some devices like VCRs, PVRs and set top boxes, that maintain some state and therefore aren't completely off and use power even though they are "off". I mean, I've heard of some TV's that do draw some noticable power while turned "off". Mine doesn't.

Re:Two things

[EmperorKagato]

If you're using a router you can throttle down your bandwidth or set QoS for your Wii. This may prevent the Wii from having connection problems because they're is too much traffic on the network.

Re:Power drain

[daeg]

I'm guessing for wireless.

Re:Power drain

[AKAImBatman]

Why does the WII require so much bloody power for network?

So much bloody power? 10 watts is nothing. It's the power usage of some incandescent night lights. So take your pick: Leave the Wii on, or keep the bad monsters away. :P

Re:Power drain

[Aladrin]

Assuming that's true, I wish they'd bothered to checked with the official wired adapter. I went ahead and bought it because my linksys is crap and locks up all the time if you are foolish enough to actually USE it. -sigh-

Not that the stats would change how I turn off my Wii, but it would be nice to know.

USB Power?

[Blakey Rat]

How much of the Xbox idle power consumption is keeping the USB ports powered to charge Play&Charge wireless controllers? Could you reduce the power by unplugging the USB cable of your controllers when done, or would that have no impact? Anybody know?

Re:USB Power?

[UbuntuDupe]

Pardom my possible ignorance here, but:

Aren't those designed to only be using power when charging a controller? And wouldn't that power have to be spent regardless, to charge the controller?

Re:USB Power?

[curiosity]

My 360 doesn't charge my controllers when it's off (which is a big irritant for me). Are you certain yours does? I have to leave mine powered on to charge the controller.

Re:USB Power?

[Why2K]

Mine does, but only if the controller is plugged in before I shut down the 360. The 360 stays powered up (the fan continues to run, but the light on the front is off and there is no video output) until the controller is fully charged, at which time it shuts down completely.

Re:USB Power?

[JFMulder]

I did a complete audit of my entertainment center with a Kill-a-watt recently. The 360, when off and nothing plugged in the USB ports consumes around 3 watts of power. Interestingly, if you plug a USB device in (like my Sensa media player), it does provide power to the device. That's my favorite way to charge the Sansa battery, since I don't have to turn on my computer and I don't have a USB-hub for my PC. I didn't try plugging my Sansa in the 360 and read the wattage tough to see if it consummed more. It probably would have.

So the absolute minimum the 360 can consume when turned off is roughly 3 watts.

Re:USB Power?

[Blakey Rat]

Hm, now that you mention it, you have a point. Once the controller is fully charged, the Xbox turns off power to the USB ports anyway... so I guess the maximum it would be "off but powering USB" would be the amount of time it takes to charge whatever controllers are plugged in.

Re:USB Power?

[Blakey Rat]

It's supposed to. There are three possibilities:

1) Your controllers aren't plugged in to the 360 when you turn it off. If you don't have anything plugged in to the USB ports, it just powers them down immediately.
2) Your controllers don't need charged. When charging is done, the 360 turns off the USB ports also.
3) Your 360 is defective.

Re:Power drain

[gr3kgr33n]

well, I guess your right on that one. I will however be doing my part in destroying the atmosphere while playing Resistance: Fall of man. When you go up against that Goliath, that system fans kick up, thats got to be a few minutes off the projected inhabitable atmosphere expectancy.

According to my Kill-O-Watt meter

[maynard]

My Xbox 360 consumes:

~2 watts while turned off

~130 watts while idle at the xbox live dashboard

~165 watts while playing Gears of War

These meter readings do not include the display device (obviously)

Re:According to my Kill-O-Watt meter

[maynard]

My 360 is connected via component to an HDTV. My expectation is that the display resolution is not the deciding factor. I'd guess, instead, that CPU and GPU transistor use matters more. The more live transistors, the heavier the electric consumption. And don't forget the optical drive, those draw a lot of power too.

Easy

[pato101]

I guess the Wii gets power from command shaking :-P

Next-Gen??

[Cornflake917]

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?

Re:Next-Gen??

[p0tat03]

That's something I've been wondering, since last-gen I was still very much a PC gamer and didn't pay much attention to consoles. Did people always call the current-gen consoles next-gen? It seems confusing to me... you can justify calling it next-gen before it comes out, or even for a few months after they do... but this is getting a bit ridiculous.

Five years from now when the PS4 and Xbox420 comes out, there will be a huge big confusion, necessitating a number of "next-gen is now last-gen!" public service announcements...

Re:Next-Gen??

[animaal]

You insensitive clod - PS2 is still current-gen in Europe!

Re:Next-Gen??

[cowscows]

I think when some real details, or at least some meaty rumors of the next round of consoles starts showing up, that's when the switch will happen. When someone uses the term next-gen, you're unlikely to think they're talking about the PS4, because nobody knows anything worth talking about it. When that becomes a problem, the semantics will change, probably rather quickly, and except for a couple wandering slashdot posts, nobody will really notice.

Re:Next-Gen??

[Trogre]

Well, comparing the specs and real-world performance of recent consoles, I'd say the Wii barely fits either category. It can barely keep up with a PS2(*), so I'd be putting it back in Generation 6.

(*) which is still outselling the Wii in pretty much every market.

Re:Next-Gen??

[miro f]

name one market where the PS2 is outselling the Wii

that's right, you can't. Because the only regions with reliable numbers for january show the Wii outselling everything except the DS.

And in other news...

[rehtonAesoohC]

Power companies are reporting that PS3 usage accounts for only 0.1% of total power consumed, while usage of Wii's and XBox360's account for 5% of power consumed.


Disclaimer: Figures are total baloney.

Re:Power drain

[wframe9109]

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and guess that it may have something to do with the Wii using a wireless to stay connected (or whatever it does)? Maybe? Maybe not.

PC power cost

[Cauchy]

According to the math/cost/etc in this article, keeping a PC on full time for cost about $20 a month. Given that my power bill is only about a $50 a month including heat, frig, tv, etc, this would mean that about 40% of my power usage is keeping a computer on. Perhaps I should go home during lunch today and turn it off.

Re:PC power cost

[rkanodia]

Please don't tell me you are going to drive home to do it.

Re:PC power cost

[Cauchy]

In my 17 MPG SUV. Is there a problem with that idea???

Re:Power drain

[AKAImBatman]

10W x 1 person isn't much. 10W x several million is.

5,000,000 Wiis * 10W = 50 megawatts

From this link (sorry, the only one I could find for power output rather than watt/hour consumption):

It is estimated that the present rate of US energy consumption - for ALL purposes - is about 3.345 Terawatts.

By those estimates, 50 megawatts is only 0.0015% of the national power output. (And I'm counting consoles that aren't in the United States.) If we assume that the Wii will become as popular as the PS2 was (37.1 million units in the United States alone), we come up with 371 Megawatts, or about 0.011% of national power capacity.

Now let me throw some other figures back at you. The PS2 slurps about 45W to play games and DVDs (x37.1 million), the GameCube drinks about 40 watts (x12.7 million), and the XBox is estimated to gulp about 100 watts to play (x24 million). Standby power* for the XBox is 6 watts, 2 watts for the PS2, and 0.4 watts for the GameCube. During gameplay, the last generation of consoles were using:

(37,100,000 * 45W) + (12,700,000 * 40W) + (24,000,000 * 100W) = 4,577.5 megawatts

during playtime, and:

(37,100,000 * 2W) + (12,700,000 * 0.4W) + (24,000,000 * 6W) = 223.28 megawatts

If you were to take the average gameplay and DVD watching time of each console and work out the figures, do you think that replacing all of the existing consoles with Wiis would increase the overall power usage, or decrease the overall power usage? Some back-of-the-envelope figures of my own suggest that using nothing but Wiis would save power over the current situation. So I repeat, 10 watts is nothing.

* Based on web searches. Actual values may vary.

Re:Power drain

[AKAImBatman]

Sorry, that second calc is supposed to have a "during standby" after it. So 223.28 megawatts for standby.

Why is wiiconnect24 required?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why is wiiconnect24 required?

[fhage]

Why worry about 9 watts. I don't turn off my wireless router at night. The specs say it uses 15 watts. I also don't turn off the 40 watt porch light or unplug the carbon monoxide detector either. The joy of the blinking blue light is well worth the 8 watts of electricity.

Re:Why is wiiconnect24 required?

[miro f]

WiiConnect24 is the name of the internet connection (like Wi-Fi network was for DS). It doesn't actually mean that it's connected 24 hours a day. You can turn that particular feature on or off with the "Standby Connection" option. Enabling WiiConnect24 just allows the Wii to connect to the Internet.

So to answer your question, you can access news and weather without having your Wii connected to the Internet 24 hours, just turn standby connection off.

Re:Why is wiiconnect24 required?

[DaSH Alpha]

More importantly, why is the Weather info often 5 hours or more old? I think they should find a better provider... Also very annoying, is that even with WiiConnect 24 on, there have been a few times when I access the weather or news channels and it says it needs to update. Um, if it's supposed to be on all the time, won't it always have the latest info assuming I don't have internet connection issues? Plus, why is the Wii Shop channel dirt slow? It's really annoying. Oh well.

Re:Why is wiiconnect24 required?

[estevon07]

I concur on the old weather info. I also find myself frequently waiting for news and weather updates (although the helpful news cat is charming). The Wii Shop channel is also painfully slow. I'd stay off Wii Shop, but those darn virtual console games like Super Mario World are too good pass up. Gotta love vintage games on a 42" plasma.

Re:Power drain

[Blakey Rat]

To answer your seriously proposed question:

do you think that replacing all of the existing consoles with Wiis would increase the overall power usage, or decrease the overall power usage?

Screw you, I want to play Panzer Dragoon Orta! ;)

More Power Consumption Specs for the Xbox 360

[Stonesand]

I wrote up an editorial on the specific details of the Xbox 360's power consumption. You can check it out here: http://www.planetxbox360.com/index.php/articledeta ils/show/1288

Power Requirements

[problemchild]

I'm always a bit dubious about power requirements. I think the PC requirements given are a little on the high side.I have measured several of my own systems(with a plug in watt meter!) all of widely differing specs and get:

1GHZ Mini ITX board based firewall with 2.5" drive 25-29W
3GHZ Seperon Board with 2GB of RAM and 2xHDD and DVD 77-109W
Athlon 3200 with 4GB RAM and 17xHDDs !!! 255-289W continuous 480W startup peak
19" LCD 35W

Either I have magically frugal computers or people's measurements come from reading off the rating of the PSU

Re: PS3's use the least amount of power!

[trdrstv]

Odd summary... You point out the part that admits it's not nearly as interesting as usage stats... Wii: 18 Watts XBox 360: 185 Watts PS3: 193 Watts PC: 198 Watts

Yes, but PS3's are the most efficient overall since the ones sitting on store shelves consume NO POWER.

Well DUH.

[AbsoluteXyro]

Consoles use power while idle? Even more power if they are connecting to the internet?? OH MY GOD stop the presses! What the hell is the point of this? This just in! Sky = blue.

Re:Power drain

[trdrstv]

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and guess that it may have something to do with the Wii using a wireless to stay connected (or whatever it does)? Maybe? Maybe not.

Though it uses a paltry amount of power anyway, (even in full use) I would be interested to know if the Wii does use less (or more) power by using the LAN adapter.

Re:Wii-heater

[randyest]

If 10 Watts keeps your room warm, then you must live in a thermos no larger than a cubic foot in volume.

What's Up Bill Gates?

[Hubec]

Mr. G has continues to donate amazing amounts of money to very worth causes, clearly he has a very active social conscience... So why doesn't he just ask his own engineers to make an effort to cut down on electricity consumption? Quickly looking at the numbers:

120 watts unnecessary power consumption in DVD mode (at least)
*
2 hours of duration for the average DVD (including menus and bathroom, and extras)
=
240 watt hours
*
24 the average number of DVDs watched a year (at least)
*
4 years average service life per console
*
500000 XBox360 consoles that will bought and used regularly
=
11,520,000,000 watt hours

11.5 giga watt hours?! WTF?! Admittedly the numbers are pulled out of my butt, however I think you'll agree that the real figures must be much higher. And I'm just looking at DVD use, nevermind the people who'll keep their console on when it's not being used. Why on earth would Billy let that much unnecessary carbon get pumped into the atmosphere when (if?) he's so concerned about the planet??? This is one example of where a tiny amount of effort would have resulted in a significant practical difference.