Climate change has always been a hot topic – and one that is apparently controversial despite literal scientific evidence – and while the politicians and business owners continue to bicker over control, others are doing their part to halt the massive consequences that have been accumulating. Small, big – the efforts continue to pour in including what the next generation of gaming looks like. That’s where Sony and Microsoft come in because they are joining forces for the next generation of Xbox and PlayStation to combat climate change.
What the PlayStation 5 and ‘Xbox Scarlett‘ have to offer has been a topic of great interest now that the next generation of gaming looms closer than ever and recent information released shows how they are hoping to utilize key features to minimize climate impact.
PlayStation 5
Sony CEO Jim Ryan took to the PlayStation blog to outline their energy-saving features that are looking to reduce the negative impact on … well, everything else. According to Ryan, “I am also very pleased to announce the next-generation PlayStation console will include the possibility to suspend gameplay with much lower power consumption than PS4 (which we estimate can be achieved at around 0.5 W). If just one million users enable this feature, it would save equivalent to the average electricity use of 1,000 US homes.
“From an operations point of view, we will complete a carbon footprint assessment of our gaming services and will report the energy efficiency measures we employ at our data centers. We are committed to informing consumers of energy-efficient console set-up and use.”
“Our commitments are not only related to hardware and operations, we are also keen to help inform people interested in sustainability goals. We have committed to working with the industry and climate experts to develop reference information for use by game developers that wish to include sustainability themes in games. In addition, we will investigate potential PS VR applications that can raise awareness of climate issues and climate experts.”
Xbox Scarlett
Microsoft is taking a slightly different approach, though with the same goal. Their promise is to make close to one million future Xbox systems carbon neutral, which would be a first for consoles. A power-saving feature similar to PlayStation’s hasn’t been revealed yet, but that doesn’t mean that won’t factor in.
The two companies have mentioned both that they are working hard to be more mindful with future generations, so more information should be filtering in over the coming months. Especially with all of the recent media attention on a certain 16-year old that is challenging the comfort of politicians and their role in what’s currently happening with our planet.
