Often, studies involving video games focus on their impacts on mental health, or what skills one can learn from playing. The bulk of these studies look for ways in which gaming can help emotional well-being or impact behavior. It is much less common for a study about video games to focus on the hobby's environmental impact. The Natural Resources Defense Council [NRDC], a non-profit dedicated to fighting polluters and protecting the environment, has released a study looking at how much energy the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S use and offer recommendations for the companies and users.
Tech products often do not receive a great deal of mainstream scrutiny for their energy usage. There is a lot involved in the production and delivery of a new console, but there isn't a lot of research done on the topic of their carbon footprint, or at least, it's not making the news. A recent study found that cloud-streaming games (as opposed to a downloaded or physical copy) had higher levels of carbon emissions per hour due to extra amounts of computing required to keep processing a game. So some work is being done to analyze gaming's environment impact.
This latest study from the NRDC found that the PS5 and Xbox Series X have varying amounts of power usage depending on the type of game being played, and what settings are enabled on the console. Games created for the consoles were found to be the biggest users of energy, as they take advantage of the computing power of the consoles. Astro's Playroom on PS5 uses 180 to over 200 watts of energy, whereas NHL 2021 (designed for PS4) only uses between 80 and 104 watts.
One of the biggest potential drains for the new consoles, according to the NRDC, are the consoles' standby modes. These modes generally stay below 1 watt of energy usage for both the PS5 and Xbox consoles, but the Xbox "Instant On" setting (which allows gamers to resume play in less than 5 seconds compared to the normal 10 to 15 seconds) saw consistent power drain of 9-10 watts on an Xbox Series S. The study's authors say that if two-thirds of Xbox Series X/S users keep this default setting on, it will lead to $500 million in extra utility bills and translates to 3 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Microsoft does console updates for the Xbox frequently, so switching something like this could save huge amounts of wasted energy.
The study doesn't come away with a clear winner as to which new console is better, as both have pros and cons depending on settings and type of usage. And while there is a study out there that claims PlayStation owners are smarter than Xbox owners, the jury is still out on which of the consoles is smarter when it comes to energy usage.