Xbox One Instant On Is Costing Gamers $250M a Year

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Every so often environmental groups look into the energy wasting propensities of always on devices. The Natural Resources Defense Council environmental group turned its Sauron-esque gaze upon the Xbox One and its Instant On mode and the report isn’t very favorable for Microsoft.

It’s not like Microsoft is completely ignoring this issue. It has managed to reduce the power consumption for “Instant On” from 18 watts to 12.5 watts. But that’s not enough for the NRDC.
 
Given that my Xbox One is on for 16 hours a day, my Instant-on feature is costing quite a bit less than the average. :D
 
that's pretty low compared to my 400 watt DTV box when its "off".
 
Yet these same liberals are usually the ones that require our absolutely massive unmanned automated plants and refineries to have a light bulb on 24x7 every 6 feet for OSHA safety, even though its completely irrelevant these days since you hardly ever need someone physically on the equipment at night and there's night-vision cameras available for monitoring remotely.

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Get your priorities straight people!
 
that's pretty low compared to my 400 watt DTV box when its "off".
Amen, rule of thumb is that with electronic devices, just put your lips near it. They are even more sensitive to heat than your hands, and how hot it feels is pretty much directly related to how much power it consumes. Set top boxes, which NO ONE should EVER need these days since cable-cards were mandated to be adopted by cable companies by law are horrible offenders.

But Comcast wants to continue to charge you $8 a month per box, even though cable-cards are supposed to be free by law and thus would plug into your TV directly would otherwise work fine... but they made sure to do everything in their power to ensure cable-cards were a flop, so 99% of homes still have those rented boxes.
 
I'll add that I hadn't really thought about it. While downloading the occasional update during use might be annoying, it happens in the background so the waiting isn't a true inconvenience. It's also not that inconvenient to wait for the console to start up.

So, I switched from instant-on to energy saving just now. It's the right thing to do.
 
Cool. Now I have something else to blame on Microsoft. My electric bill.

Thanks, Microsoft. You suck some more....

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It's the price you pay for instant on. Turn if off if you don't like it.
 
It's the price you pay for instant on. Turn if off if you don't like it.
True, but what these types of groups want is for the default "off" mode to be changed. In Europe, for example, the off mode defaults to fully off with sub-1W power consumption.

I really don't care that devices like current consoles default to instant on mode. It would cost about $1 per month per console, with most of the idle hours outside of peak power usage so it's not really causing a notable strain on power generation.
 
True, but what these types of groups want is for the default "off" mode to be changed. In Europe, for example, the off mode defaults to fully off with sub-1W power consumption.
There I think they have an excellent point. The difference is a little baffling, too. By defaulting to on in the US are they saying that Americans love to waste power, are too impatient to wait, or are too dumb to turn it on and will thus complain about the console not having the feature?

I don't remember if it asks about this feature during setup, and I wouldn't have thought much about it if it did. What would be cool is if it defaulted to "off" and when it asked about the setting during setup it displayed a screen showing the average energy/money savings by disabling the feature. I don't think anybody could complain about that or, at least, they couldn't complain about Microsoft about that. :)
I really don't care that devices like current consoles default to instant on mode. It would cost about $1 per month per console, with most of the idle hours outside of peak power usage so it's not really causing a notable strain on power generation.
No, it's probably not something that most of us would get exercised about but it's totally understandable that the NRDC would, since it's kind of their job.
 
It is the end of the world! The xbox costs me 3 cents a day to keep the instant on feature enabled using the US average electricity cost.What ever will I do? Gotta love sensationalism.

Hrm. ~93 cents a month, so to hit that 250 million power savings that would mean there were more than 21 million consoles sold. (Well, either that or my math is just fail :D )

Did the One overtake the PS4 in sales when I wasn't looking?
 
I'll pay for the convenience. I love how my Xbox one is ready to go with the latest system and game updates, to the point where I barely recall seeing or waiting for any.

PS4 failed on this. I was using their instant on with a psn subscription but still I was greeted by system and game updates regularly. I started turning it off. I use my Xbox one way more often anyway.
 
That's nothing compared to the waste of "cough" magical cryptocoins..

This. Folding at home has tangible benefits, all these currencies seem to be a waste of processing power. I would like to problem solving attached to crypto currency.
 
I'll pay for the convenience. I love how my Xbox one is ready to go with the latest system and game updates, to the point where I barely recall seeing or waiting for any.

PS4 failed on this. I was using their instant on with a psn subscription but still I was greeted by system and game updates regularly. I started turning it off. I use my Xbox one way more often anyway.

Assuming you're a PS+ subscriber it would download system updates, patches, and game saves/uploads whenever they were availible. You had to configure it in System settings though iirc, I don't think it was set to on by default.

I don't think I've ever had to wait for much of anything unless I purchased something while at the house. Otherwise I'd buy something from the store at work and it would be ready to go once I got home or things were released overnight while I was asleep.

The system wouldn't automatically update itself (firmware) unless you told it to install but it was already downloaded. That got patched with 2.50.
 
There is a pretty easy fix for these issues. You plug your devices into power strip. When you aren't using them, turn off the power strip. BOOM, problem solved.
 
This is so stupid. Just turn the thing off already. Are we really that lazy we that we cant be inconvenienced by 15 seconds of power up?

If it isnt a server, turn it the hell off when your not using it. The end.

My machine cold boots to windows splash screen in 13-14 seconds. Has anyone, ever, had an non-job related situation where the difference between cold boot and wake from sleep cost enough money or time to justify the extra power waste your generating?
 
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