Most Game Console Power Draw Comes From Time Spent Idling

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."

Comments

What is the point of gaming consoles?

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly is the purpose of gaming consoles today? These days, they're merely locked-down PCs that are several years out of date, and damn near impossible to upgrade. It's not the games, since many of them target every major console and non-console platform these days. It's not the graphics quality, since PCs offer much better quality imagery. It's not the controllers, because there is a much wider range of options for PCs. It's not their networking abilities, given that consoles were many years behind PCs in this respect.

While consoles make sense for the businesses who want to lock-in users, they make absolutely no sense for consumers. PCs are a much better option in every way possible.

Re:What is the point of gaming consoles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for playing multiplayer games from the comfort of your couch.

Re:What is the point of gaming consoles?

[nautsch]

It's the ease of use. Simple as that.

Re:What is the point of gaming consoles?

[mwvdlee]

A locked-down hardware and (for the most part) software specification that developers can optimize too. Consoles are older hardware that is much better utilized.

Re:What is the point of gaming consoles?

[petermgreen]

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?

[julesh]

How much would you have to spend today on a PC that's equivalent to, say, an XBox 360? How much does the XBox cost?
There's probably more to it than cost, but last time I checked PCs weren't sold as loss-leaders.

That's an interesting question, bcause the XBox's processor is not directly equivalent to a PC processor. Because it's an in-order execution system, it doesn't really compare well to PC processors jusrt by looking at its specs. It may be a 3-core 2-instruction capable processor, but in reality most code likely only fills one of the instruction slots at a time (similarly to the original Pentium). Whereas modern PC processors tend to be able to handle 2 or even 3 instructions per cycle a lot of the time. So it may be best to think of it as being similar to a modern CPU with about half the clock speed. Although there are still significant differences. A quick review of old documents on it suggests a 21-stage pipeline, which is longer than current-generation PC processors, and means mispredicted branches are going to be slower comparitivlely. It also has a much smaller cache than modern PC processors, and it's 21.6GB/s memory bandwidth is comparable to the very low end of current desktop processors. All-in-all, thererfore, I'd expect any modern dual-core budget processor (e.g. a Celeron G530) to outperrform it in most tasks.

The onboard graphics on a Celeron G530 processor is considered comparable in capability to ATI cards from 3 generations later than the ones that are most similar architecturally to the XBox 360's graphics chip, so this basic PC should substantially outperform the XBox 360 in graphics performance.

So, processor: £36.24 (dabs.com). Add to that processor a budget microATX motherboard (£34.99), 2GB RAM (4 times as much as is in the XBox 360, but the smallest amount available these days) (£11.97), case & PSU (£19.99), hard disk (£34.99) and optical drive (£11.99), and the total is *very* similar to the cost of an Xbox 360 (about £1 more expensive than the cheapest deal I see for a new 360 on google shopping). For a machine that outclasses the 360 in most respects (perhaps even all respects... it is very hard to compare the CPU performance).

Re:What is the point of gaming consoles?

[pipatron]

The question should be rephrased:

How much more do you have to spend on your computer for it to match the power of an XBox 360?

Because today, you already need a computer.

Re:What is the point of gaming consoles?

[raving griff]

The last Resident Evil game on the DS even had no ability to delete a saved game, effectively making the game one play per sale.

Second to last, actually. This is an important distinction because the game you are talking about, Resident Evil Mercenaries, is an arcade-style action game, where the only actual progress to be deleted is earning high scores and unlocking additional levels and characters. The most recent Resident Evil game for the 3DS, Resident Evil Revelations, is a story-based experience and does offer the option to delete save files.

The first-sale codes are a little more controversial in the gaming blagosphere. No publisher has denied a single-player experience to players who do not use the included code, but multiplayer and downloadable content is often tied to it. For some games, this is not a big deal, but for others, multiplayer is a major component of the game. However, the codes are not "darn close" to the MSRP; the MSRP of new games is typically $60, with used games going for $40-$55. The codes sell for $10-$20, with the goal of making the price used (with all multiplayer and DLC in tact) the same as the price of a new game, thus encouraging gamers to purchase a new game.

There is an interesting debate concerning whether what EA is doing is ethical or not. On one hand, we have the First Sale Doctrine, which guarantees the reselling of used products and might(?) be violated by EA's first-sale codes. However, the First Sale Doctrine was created with things like houses and automobiles in mind--things that naturally tend to lose value over time, due to wear and tear, or things that maintain value only if money is spent on repairs and renovations. Thus the decrease in value is tied to its use.

Software, on the other hand, does not depreciate in value in the same way. While the physical media--box, manual, and disc--are vulnerable to wear and tear, the bulk of a game's value comes from the game itself, which comprises of the software on the disc. In general, the game either works or it doesn't; a game will hold full value as a game until the disc breaks, at which point it will hold virtually no value.

What this leads to is a used market dependent entirely on the game's popularity. Games that are less popular suffer a multiplied loss: less copies will be sold new, and, because the price difference between used and new is so great, a higher percentage of copies will be sold used, further hurting its sales. The invisible hand certainly has something to say about the justice of unpopular games causing losses, but in an industry as young as gaming, any factors that increase the risk associated with developing a game (typically over 2-5 years, costing hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars) can be seen as negatively impacting the development of games as an art form. (Recently, independent games made on small budgets in far less time, have become prolific; they often represent the riskiest, most innovative, and in some cases, most artistic expressions in gaming.)

Is it fair for games to be subject to a popularity multiplier? Maybe. However, the gaming industry is a different framework than what the first-sale doctrine was established for. I realize I have been playing the devil's advocate throughout most of this comment, but I believe the issue needs to be explored with hard economics before we can draw strong opinions on whether it is right or not for publishers to discourage the sale of used games. It is possible that the used games industry puts games into the hands of far more people, improving its legitimacy as an art form, but it is also possible that used games are a primary factor pushing publishers towards sticking to established franchises and neglecting innovation in favor of reliable sales.

PS3 controller charging

[Albanach]

What truly shocked me about the PS3 was to find that attached controllers do not appear to charge unless the console is powered on.

This is an absurd state of affairs and has, apparently, persisted through hardware revisions. The device itself can power on overnight from standby and sync with the PS network/download patches etc, but you need to wake the thing to charge the controller. This encourages the device being left on 24x7 with all the expense and environmental consequences that go along with that.

Re:PS3 controller charging

[olsmeister]

I think what surprises him (and me too, frankly) is that when the PS3 if powered 'off', it's not really off, merely in more of a sleep state. There are still active parts of the machine doing things like keeping the little red LED lit on the front, the bluetooth circuitry is active waiting for someone to hit the power button on a controller, etc. There really is no reason that they couldn't keep the USB ports powered up as well. I've often left my PS3 on overnight to charge the controllers, and then forgot to turn it off for several more days afterward.

I think one of the real culprits here is code, OS, and library bloat that causes boot times on consumer devices to be in the seconds or 10's of seconds from a cold start. Even my TV takes about 5-10 seconds after I hit power before I can actually watch anything. The lazy way to mitigate this is to not ever really power down, but just appear to. There really is no excuse to take this long to boot into what should be a minimal OS from flash memory. This laziness costs consumers cold hard cash, albeit over months and years.

Re:incorrect much?

[Anonymous Coward]

10,800,000 kWh is 10.8 GWh not 10.8 TWh. 10.8 TWh is 10,800,000,000 kWh which would be $1,360,800,000 at your rates. Also, does that rate include distribution charges or only generation charges?

Re:doesn't sound like idle.

[houghi]

What they calculated is the cost of camping.

An example of free market failure

[ShooterNeo]

This is a classic example of free market failure. Making the consoles more efficient costs the manufacturers money. There's the cost to add power gating transistors to all the multi-core chips, use more expensive versions of the same chip binned for lower power consumption, and write the firmware to maximize power efficiency.

All this will create a benefit that the consumers cannot perceive, directly. Almost no consumers own a Kill-a-Watt, and they don't have any options because there are not many competing consoles, there are only 3, and they are not remotely equivalent to each other. (a consumer unhappy with xbox/ps3 power consumption will not get the same gaming experience on the Wii)

Re:doesn't sound like idle.

[pepty]

FTA:

Because of the low failure rates and short time periods involved, we assume that all consoles sold are in active use. F

we assume that 30 % of users leave their console idle when not in use, with the remainder putting their console into standby mode. Given the importance of this assumption, we perform a thorough sensitivity analysis, discussed at length in “Results: estimated console energy consumption”. The PS3 and Xbox 360 have both added an “auto power down” capability through firmware updates, but this feature is not enabled by default and is difficult to find in system menus. We believe that this feature is not frequently utilized by consumers, and we neglect its effects on overall power consumption.

hmmmm ....

Not all idle power is waste

[xtal]

I heat my house with electricity. Power from idle devices offsets the load from heating - two orders of magnitude higher than idle draws in the very cold months. My home rack puts out enough heat to keep my office comfortable all winter, and I power down in summer, as I'm out doing things. No AC here. I've looked at doing things like having a small greenhouse indoors, etc - the base heat I'm paying for is good electricity turned directly into heat.

Of course, if you have AC, then you pay double - once for the heat generation from waste, and again to remove it.

Nothing in life is that black and white.

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