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This is my first post here but I've been reading for a while now. So I'm pretty confident this is relevant to the forum.
I'm a gamer and have considered myself one since I first held the Atari 2600 joystick. During the day I work for an environmental organization called NRDC, and am excited that we've finally done some work that connects my job to my love for gaming. Today we released a report called Lowering the Cost of Play which is an analysis of console energy consumption, and a few steps we can all take to improve that consumption.
Before I saw the report yesterday, I had no idea that my consoles use more energy than all of my kitchen appliances combined (including my fridge). The raw number? We gamers use 16 billion kilowatt hours of electricity every year, the majority of which comes from those of us who leave our consoles on.
Anyway, I though the report would make for some good discussion here in the G&T forum. You can see it over here: http://www.nrdc.org/energy/consoles/contents.asp and I'd love to hear your responses.
TL;DR
"this estimate is based on the assumption that half of all users leave their device on all the time"
Turning off devices may save electricity, further study required to confirm
Editing to put some debunkage up here in large, bold text:
---
Hold on, let me break out the popcorn and lawnchair before I destroy this fucking argument again.
tl;dr is going to be pretty much the following:
1. Fuck you, technology is incredibly goddamn efficient right now compared to Ye Olden Days
2. The cost of gaming compared to other forms of entertainment is impressive
3. Tests are probably flawed
[strike]And a sidebar of stop using pictures like this:[/strike]
ToTaLlY eXtReMe GaMeR kId image removed, thank christ
[strike]To represent gamers. That's not even a fucking 360/PS3 controller he's holding.[/strike]
Also, welcome to the forums.
PeregrineFalcon on
Looking for a DX:HR OnLive code for my kid brother.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Hold on, let me break out the popcorn and lawnchair before I destroy this fucking argument again.
tl;dr is going to be pretty much the following:
1. Fuck you, technology is incredibly goddamn efficient right now compared to Ye Olden Days
2. The cost of gaming compared to other forms of entertainment is impressive
3. Tests are probably flawed
And a sidebar of stop using pictures like this:
To represent gamers. That's not even a fucking 360/PS3 controller he's holding.
Also, welcome to the forums.
But he has both joy sticks forward! Assuming he's using Inverted look he's AT THE EDGE LOOKING DOWN WITH ENGERY!!!!
When I am not at home I shut everything off. I like saving energy.
Tiger BurningDig if you will, the pictureRegistered User, SolidSaints Tuberegular
edited November 2008
Don't want to dig into it right now but I looked at the fact sheet. How was the total time on for the two groups (on and off) estimated? And what were the actual numbers in hours/year (or week or whatever)?
Hold on, let me break out the popcorn and lawnchair before I destroy this fucking argument again.
tl;dr is going to be pretty much the following:
1. Fuck you, technology is incredibly goddamn efficient right now compared to Ye Olden Days
2. The cost of gaming compared to other forms of entertainment is impressive
3. Tests are probably flawed
And a sidebar of stop using pictures like this:
To represent gamers. That's not even a fucking 360/PS3 controller he's holding.
Also, welcome to the forums.
But he has both joy sticks forward! Assuming he's using Inverted look he's AT THE EDGE LOOKING DOWN WITH ENGERY!!!!
When I am not at home I shut everything off. I like saving energy.
Power is equal to the derivative of AWESOME.
I don't play for days at a time. I go the extra step and unplug things I don't use, because they still consume electricity.
Yeah, I didn't see the photo till this morning. It's pretty terrible.
Maybe you should read the report before you go off. I'm not arguing consoles are NOT efficient, and neither is the report. The argument is that they consume energy, they ship with energy saving features DISABLED, and that nearly 50% of the gamers surveyed leave their consoles on all the time.
The fact that electronics are "incredibly efficient" doesn't change the raw numbers of power usage. Am I glad we only use 16 billion kilowatt hours of electricity instead of 36 or more? Yes, but enabling the energy saving features can reduce that number by 11 billion. That is an unarguably huge amount for a few simple steps. The majority of that savings can happen on the manufacturer end by changing those settings before the console hits the shelf.
orinos73 on
0
Tiger BurningDig if you will, the pictureRegistered User, SolidSaints Tuberegular
A glance at the fact sheet tells me I'm doing fine by turning my consoles off after use. I am pretty vigilant about turning my computer off too, which is probably an area that is of more concern since people leave it on more often, and it has more market penetration.
This just in - turning shit off saves electricity, more on news at 11.
The average fridge (20cf, ~12 - 15 years old) consumes about 3.5kwh per day. This is roughly the same as leaving a 360 on and idling, but more than most PCs. The surpising thing is this took all of ten minutes of research to figure out and I find myself wondering how much these two organizations made to produce this report. How many resources were used up to tell people to use common sense?
Yeah, I didn't see the photo till this morning. It's pretty terrible.
Maybe you should read the report before you go off. I'm not arguing consoles are NOT efficient, and neither is the report. The argument is that they consume energy, they ship with energy saving features DISABLED, and that nearly 50% of the gamers surveyed leave their consoles on all the time.
The fact that electronics are "incredibly efficient" doesn't change the raw numbers of power usage. Am I glad we only use 16 billion kilowatt hours of electricity instead of 36 or more? Yes, but enabling the energy saving features can reduce that number by 11 billion. That is an unarguably huge amount for a few simple steps. The majority of that savings can happen on the manufacturer end by changing those settings before the console hits the shelf.
Oh, I've read the article, and the arguments. Many times, in fact, because it's the same thing rehashed over and over.
Given ... the assumption that half of users leave their console on all the time
The problem is that this assumption, and the argument based on it, is bullshit. Hands up everyone here who doesn't run F@H who leaves their console on all the time.
Most users already shut their consoles off, and those who don't are usually PS3 owners running Folding@Home. And you can't fold with the console off. So there goes that argument.
Efficient power supplies? See above re: technology being pretty efficient already. It's a case of diminishing returns after the 80-90% efficiency mark.
Performance scaling? Sure, that's great at idle - but as we've established, most consoles have two settings - Off, and Being Used To Their Fullest Potential. Developers are trying to push the limits of the hardware, not "leave some headroom so that we can downclock the cores we aren't using." The only reason this would be useful in development is "If you're clocking down, you need to push the silicon harder."
About the only useful outcome from this is the suggestion "Improve Understanding of Video Game Console Usage" - because the people writing this report don't have a clue.
PeregrineFalcon on
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Tiger BurningDig if you will, the pictureRegistered User, SolidSaints Tuberegular
This just in - turning shit off saves electricity, more on news at 11.
The average fridge (20cf, ~12 - 15 years old) consumes about 3.5kwh per day. This is roughly the same as leaving a 360 on and idling, but more than most PCs. The surpising thing is this took all of ten minutes of research to figure out and I find myself wondering how much these two organizations made to produce this report. How many resources were used up to tell people to use common sense?
Well, I think that they were trying to get at the aggregate effects, rather than the personal, either: a) to encourage the manufacturers to install power-down defaults in their machine, and/or; b) in the hopes that knowledge of the aggregate effect might encourage some individuals to power down when the knowledge of personal loss does not. As to the likelihood of their success in either endeavor, I express no opinion.
Yeah, I didn't see the photo till this morning. It's pretty terrible.
Maybe you should read the report before you go off. I'm not arguing consoles are NOT efficient, and neither is the report. The argument is that they consume energy, they ship with energy saving features DISABLED, and that nearly 50% of the gamers surveyed leave their consoles on all the time.
The fact that electronics are "incredibly efficient" doesn't change the raw numbers of power usage. Am I glad we only use 16 billion kilowatt hours of electricity instead of 36 or more? Yes, but enabling the energy saving features can reduce that number by 11 billion. That is an unarguably huge amount for a few simple steps. The majority of that savings can happen on the manufacturer end by changing those settings before the console hits the shelf.
Oh, I've read the article, and the arguments. Many times, in fact, because it's the same thing rehashed over and over.
Given ... the assumption that half of users leave their console on all the time
The problem is that this assumption, and the argument based on it, is bullshit. Hands up everyone here who doesn't run F@H who leaves their console on all the time.
Most users already shut their consoles off, and those who don't are usually PS3 owners running Folding@Home. And you can't fold with the console off. So there goes that argument.
Efficient power supplies? See above re: technology being pretty efficient already. It's a case of diminishing returns after the 80-90% efficiency mark.
Performance scaling? Sure, that's great at idle - but as we've established, most consoles have two settings - Off, and Being Used To Their Fullest Potential. Developers are trying to push the limits of the hardware, not "leave some headroom so that we can downclock the cores we aren't using." The only reason this would be useful in development is "If you're clocking down, you need to push the silicon harder."
About the only useful outcome from this is the suggestion "Improve Understanding of Video Game Console Usage" - because the people writing this report don't have a clue.
Ok, regardless of whether or not that assumption is true (personally, I think it's utterly false) - which of the recommendations do you disagree with? Adding in a 'sleep' mode for those idiots who don't turn off their consoles? Scaling down energy consumption during DVD and Blu-Ray playback to match those of regular players (which is where the performance scaling comes in)? Making power management options more visible or opt-out instead of opt-in to the user? While I'd consider their overall savings numbers to be inaccurate, that doesn't change the fact that there are some places that can be improved, and Microsoft and Sony should take steps to improve the efficiency of their consoles in certain areas.
I don't know about other people, but I make myself aware of how much power I use on a monthly basis when I get my power bill. Having that dollar attachment to my usage makes me very aware of when I leave things on or not.
Ok, regardless of whether or not that assumption is true (personally, I think it's utterly false) - which of the recommendations do you disagree with? Adding in a 'sleep' mode for those idiots who don't turn off their consoles? Scaling down energy consumption during DVD and Blu-Ray playback to match those of regular players? Making power management options more visible to the user? While I'd consider their overall savings numbers to be inaccurate, that doesn't change the fact that there are some places that can be improved, and Microsoft and Sony should take steps to improve the efficiency of their consoles in certain areas.
Those measures are already underway, without needing numbers fabricated from whole cloth to back them up.
I'm not questioning the study's outcomes as much as the combination of the need for the study and the inaccuracy of the data used to back it up.
PeregrineFalcon on
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Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
I think this study is really neat and probably necessary right now...but I'm bothered by the fact that they don't specify anywhere- that I can find- the amount of time they presume users are using the consoles. And yeah, the assumption that half of users leave their consoles in is just kind of silly.
And, to get really nitpicky, I'd like to see them test each build of the consoles. It would probably also help to compare the consuption of consoles to that of computers and TVs (CRT vs. LCD, and varying size) to give a really good picture of what a given gamer is ultimately spending.
That said, if the report set out to simply prove that never turning off your system is wasteful, then it succeeded. Maybe now we should have a report on how much power and labour they used to prove something my four-year-old cousin could have told me.
Oh, I've read the article, and the arguments. Many times, in fact, because it's the same thing rehashed over and over.
Given ... the assumption that half of users leave their console on all the time
The problem is that this assumption, and the argument based on it, is bullshit. Hands up everyone here who doesn't run F@H who leaves their console on all the time.
Most users already shut their consoles off, and those who don't are usually PS3 owners running Folding@Home. And you can't fold with the console off. So there goes that argument.
I'm saying this with all due respect, and in the interest of keeping the conversation going - F@H has 340,000 active installs (across ALL platforms) - Global PS3 sales as of 2008 16.8 million. Sorry, but your F@H argument just doesn't fly with me.
orinos73 on
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Tiger BurningDig if you will, the pictureRegistered User, SolidSaints Tuberegular
edited November 2008
Yeah, I was inclined to be sympathetic to your report, but the "We don't have any data so lets say 50%." is pretty shady. Having a good cause is no excuse for doing bad science.
In the absence of data, a better method of estimation is the Copernican Assumption, in which you do the calculation at 2.5 and 97.5% and present the range. Alternatively, you could have very easily conducted an informal poll that would have had far less error than your unsupported guess.
This is my first post here but I've been reading for a while now. So I'm pretty confident this is relevant to the forum.
I'm a gamer and have considered myself one since I first held the Atari 2600 joystick. During the day I work for an environmental organization called NRDC, and am excited that we've finally done some work that connects my job to my love for gaming. Today we released a report called Lowering the Cost of Play which is an analysis of console energy consumption, and a few steps we can all take to improve that consumption.
Before I saw the report yesterday, I had no idea that my consoles use more energy than all of my kitchen appliances combined (including my fridge). The raw number? We gamers use 16 billion kilowatt hours of electricity every year, the majority of which comes from those of us who leave our consoles on.
Anyway, I though the report would make for some good discussion here in the G&T forum. You can see it over here: http://www.nrdc.org/energy/consoles/contents.asp and I'd love to hear your responses.
I read the article and it does give some good points. What mostly bothers me here is the "Given ... the assumption that half of users leave their console on all the time". It is assumptions like this that lead to reports of fear mongering and lousy investigating. I see your graphs and I don't like how one can assume a number and whatever sounds best (50%) is what you go with. That mean's if when or even if you did this poll and asked "do you leave your system on?" you got responses like this: yes, no, yes, no. That is just hard to believe.
EDIT: Also a better use of your time would be to market enegy saving light bulbs.
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
edited November 2008
When you assume you make an ass out of u and me
Are we back in the cartridge era where people left their games on all the time or something? And even then you did it because some games you couldn't save your progress at any time like today.
Oh, I've read the article, and the arguments. Many times, in fact, because it's the same thing rehashed over and over.
Given ... the assumption that half of users leave their console on all the time
The problem is that this assumption, and the argument based on it, is bullshit. Hands up everyone here who doesn't run F@H who leaves their console on all the time.
Most users already shut their consoles off, and those who don't are usually PS3 owners running Folding@Home. And you can't fold with the console off. So there goes that argument.
I'm saying this with all due respect, and in the interest of keeping the conversation going - F@H has 340,000 active installs (across ALL platforms) - Global PS3 sales as of 2008 16.8 million. Sorry, but your F@H argument just doesn't fly with me.
He's saying that of those people who leave them on, they're usually running F@4.
Although, according to '50% land', 340k out of 8 million isn't most.
Oh, I've read the article, and the arguments. Many times, in fact, because it's the same thing rehashed over and over.
Given ... the assumption that half of users leave their console on all the time
The problem is that this assumption, and the argument based on it, is bullshit. Hands up everyone here who doesn't run F@H who leaves their console on all the time.
Most users already shut their consoles off, and those who don't are usually PS3 owners running Folding@Home. And you can't fold with the console off. So there goes that argument.
I'm saying this with all due respect, and in the interest of keeping the conversation going - F@H has 340,000 active installs (across ALL platforms) - Global PS3 sales as of 2008 16.8 million. Sorry, but your F@H argument just doesn't fly with me.
Here, I'll save you some legwork and do what you won't - research.
BTW, PeregrineFalcon, the graph you took out doesn't help your argument at all. You want the graphs and table on page 23 of the report. It doesn't matter if it's 1% or 99% of people who leave their consoles on all the time - those cost differences are going to be the same. The questionable numbers are those for the overall savings of 11 billion kWh per year.
And still, regardless of the ridiculous 50% assumption, there are some useful recommendations here.
Also, I'm really amazed at Nintendo's consistent low power usage throughout their history.
BTW, PeregrineFalcon, the graph you took out doesn't help your argument at all. You want the graphs and table on page 23 of the report. It doesn't matter if it's 1% or 99% of people who leave their consoles on all the time - those cost differences are going to be the same. The questionable numbers are those for the overall savings of 11 billion kWh per year.
And still, regardless of the ridiculous 50% assumption, there are some useful recommendations here.
Also, I'm really amazed at Nintendo's consistent low power usage throughout their history.
There's a reason it's under the TL;DR heading - it's for those who wouldn't get that far. And it supports the argument perfectly - if you turn off your console when you're not using it, you've already reduced the annual power consumption by a factor of (hours running per day/24) and additional power savings won't help.
To make a terrible car analogy, it's like trying to say that implementing cylinder deactivation and regenerative braking on top fuel dragsters is a good idea. They're either on the trailer (off) or running at full throttle (gaming) - it'll only help those who were using it as a grocery-getter. In other words, the morons.
I don't mean to be this much of an asshole, but that's how I roll. Think of me as Penn Jillette if he got a a haircut.
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kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
edited November 2008
I'm not sure what PeregrineFalcon is trying to argue. No matter how efficient consoles currently are, it's clear they can be even more efficient. No matter what exact percentage of users leave their console on, it's clear there's a substantial enough group of those who do such that if they were to stop we would reap significant energy savings. If you were trying to price a pigovian tax or something these measurement concerns would become relevant, but for the point of the report, those concerns aren't.
...but an external drive must be purchased and used to play high-definition Blu-ray movie discs.
There is no external Blu-ray player for the XBox 360. You might be thinking of the (failed) HD-DVD external drive, which is no longer sold. Amusingly, you actually mention the lack of Blu-ray in your analysis, when you specify that you had to use King Kong as the 360 movie. Nothing says "written by committee" like rampant factual discrepancies!
future generations of the PlayStation could one-fifth as much power to play a Blu-ray movie as do the current models.
Did you edit this? Was it edited at any point by anyone?
Given the market’s adoption of Blu-ray as the format for future high-definition DVDs, one can easily imagine future generations of the Xbox including the capability to play Blu-ray discs.
Speculation, ho! Rather than making wild guesses about what one can or cannot imagine, maybe you should have researched the issue in question. Blu-ray may have won the format war, but that doesn't mean anybody is actually going to *use* it. Have you seen the Blu-ray section in Blockbuster? It is fucking tiny. Most people just don't give a shit about marginally better quality, especially when most DVD players upscale anyway. Blu-ray doesn't represent the next stage in the evolution of video display; it's a niche little sidestep. Or to put it another way: Blu-ray isn't DVD 2.0, the future standard of visual media. It's more like Laserdisc 2.0. So, saying that future generations of the XBox will have Blu-ray support is about as intelligent and sensible as saying that future generations of the XBox will cure cancer with the aid of their onboard cold fusion power supplies.
While we are unaware of any user data revealing the percentage of users who turn off their consoles after use, we have found anecdotally that many users leave their consoles on all the time. Some turn off their televisions at the end of a session and but to turn off peripherals like the console, while others keep their consoles on in order not to lose progress in a game.
No, you cannot do that in a paper that has any pretense of actual scientific validity. You cannot. You are not allowed. You can't take your precise measurements of power usage and your sales figures and then throw up your hands and say "We don't actually know how many people turn off their consoles, but Susan at the office says her son Billy fucking never powers his XBox down, so we're gonna apply that anecdotal experience to the total population and call it... say... half. Half of all console users never turn off their consoles!"
Console users are many things, but they don't tend to be stupid. They know that serious hardware problems are caused by overheating, and that overheating is caused by prolonged use. I would be shocked speechless if you actually provided some statistic - any statistic - showing that half of all XBox 360 owners leave their consoles on all the time, because that's how red rings of death happen, and most of us try to avoid those.
Also, the vast majority of modern games either give you the availability to save at any time (Fable 2, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, etc), or they use an autosave system with multiple, closely-spaced checkpoints (Gears of War 1 and 2, GTA IV, etc). Or they use both! With a possible few, rare exceptions, we're long past the days of needing to leave our Segas on overnight because we forgot to write down the last code for Road Rash 2 and we're on the last race. That shit just doesn't happen anymore.
I applaud your desire to improve the industry and all, it's really commendable, and I agree that every measure that can reasonably be taken to reduce power consumption should be taken. Auto-shutoff as a mandatory feature? Great! Sleep/standby modes for consoles? That'd be just swell. But if you expect something like this to be taken seriously by the people who actually play the games, do your fucking research first. Don't come in here with inaccurate, inconsistent, unproven bullshit and expect us to buy it.
...but an external drive must be purchased and used to play high-definition Blu-ray movie discs.
There is no external Blu-ray player for the XBox 360. You might be thinking of the (failed) HD-DVD external drive, which is no longer sold. Amusingly, you actually mention the lack of Blu-ray in your analysis, when you specify that you had to use King Kong as the 360 movie. Nothing says "written by committee" like rampant factual discrepancies!
future generations of the PlayStation could one-fifth as much power to play a Blu-ray movie as do the current models.
Did you edit this? Was it edited at any point by anyone?
Given the market’s adoption of Blu-ray as the format for future high-definition DVDs, one can easily imagine future generations of the Xbox including the capability to play Blu-ray discs.
Speculation, ho! Rather than making wild guesses about what one can or cannot imagine, maybe you should have researched the issue in question. Blu-ray may have won the format war, but that doesn't mean anybody is actually going to *use* it. Have you seen the Blu-ray section in Blockbuster? It is fucking tiny. Most people just don't give a shit about marginally better quality, especially when most DVD players upscale anyway. Blu-ray doesn't represent the next stage in the evolution of video display; it's a niche little sidestep. Or to put it another way: Blu-ray isn't DVD 2.0, the future standard of visual media. It's more like Laserdisc 2.0. So, saying that future generations of the XBox will have Blu-ray support is about as intelligent and sensible as saying that future generations of the XBox will cure cancer with the aid of their onboard cold fusion power supplies.
While we are unaware of any user data revealing the percentage of users who turn off their consoles after use, we have found anecdotally that many users leave their consoles on all the time. Some turn off their televisions at the end of a session and but to turn off peripherals like the console, while others keep their consoles on in order not to lose progress in a game.
No, you cannot do that in a paper that has any pretense of actual scientific validity. You cannot. You are not allowed. You can't take your precise measurements of power usage and your sales figures and then throw up your hands and say "We don't actually know how many people turn off their consoles, but Susan at the office says her son Billy fucking never powers his XBox down, so we're gonna apply that anecdotal experience to the total population and call it... say... half. Half of all console users never turn off their consoles!"
Console users are many things, but they don't tend to be stupid. They know that serious hardware problems are caused by overheating, and that overheating is caused by prolonged use. I would be shocked speechless if you actually provided some statistic - any statistic - showing that half of all XBox 360 owners leave their consoles on all the time, because that's how red rings of death happen, and most of us try to avoid those.
Also, the vast majority of modern games either give you the availability to save at any time (Fable 2, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, etc), or they use an autosave system with multiple, closely-spaced checkpoints (Gears of War 1 and 2, GTA IV, etc). Or they use both! With a possible few, rare exceptions, we're long past the days of needing to leave our Segas on overnight because we forgot to write down the last code for Road Rash 2 and we're on the last race. That shit just doesn't happen anymore.
I applaud your desire to improve the industry and all, it's really commendable, and I agree that every measure that can reasonably be taken to reduce power consumption should be taken. Auto-shutoff as a mandatory feature? Great! Sleep/standby modes for consoles? That'd be just swell. But if you expect something like this to be taken seriously by the people who actually play the games, do your fucking research first. Don't come in here with inaccurate, inconsistent, unproven bullshit and expect us to buy it.
Thank you for saying what I was trying to come out with, but it couldn't make it through the Asshole Filter.
PeregrineFalcon on
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Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
If I turn my PS3 off I'm saving the planet, if I leave it on I'm curing cancer.
Fuck yeah altruism!
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Tiger BurningDig if you will, the pictureRegistered User, SolidSaints Tuberegular
edited November 2008
A better estimate, in the absence of data, would be 5%. Call this your conservative estimate, and try to make your case there.
You should also include estimates of the number of people that would opt-out of power saving features.
Also, you should probably includes estimates of the actual amount of time that "always on" consoles are actually on, because I'm pretty sure that it isn't even close to 100%. 70-80% seems more reasonable.
If you have to make a case without supporting data, it's more convincing if you use more conservative estimates.
I don't have the time to read through the entire article, but what does 'leaving the console on' mean? Does it mean having it running? Does it mean being plugged in, but on standby?
I know that the PS3 just had a power-save/sleep option added to it with the last firmware update....
I don't have the time to read through the entire article, but what does 'leaving the console on' mean? Does it mean having it running? Does it mean being plugged in, but on standby?
I know that the PS3 just had a power-save/sleep option added to it with the last firmware update....
Leaving it fully powered on running games 24/7 errrrrrrrrrryday.
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A better estimate, in the absence of data, would be 5%. Call this your conservative estimate, and try to make your case there.
You should also include estimates of the number of people that would opt-out of power saving features.
Also, you should probably includes estimates of the actual amount of time that "always on" consoles are actually on, because I'm pretty sure that it isn't even close to 100%. 70-80% seems more reasonable.
If you have to make a case without supporting data, it's more convincing if you use more conservative estimates.
Not to be rude here, but even if they make those changes, at the end of the day you still come to the conclusion that "turning shit off saves power."
Why do we need a big study to show that? Wouldn't that be common sense?
If I turn my PS3 off I'm saving the planet, if I leave it on I'm curing cancer.
Fuck yeah altruism!
Don't you get it, man? We're the cancer killing Mother Earth, using up all of her natural resources! Who's going to cure her? Duuuuuude!
Earth is using all of our natural resources. Not the other way around.
"Mother Earth - raped again. Guess who? 'Hey, she was askin' for it.'" - George Carlin
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kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
edited November 2008
This rabid, snarky response to a research paper which says "we'd save more energy if consoles were energy efficient and if people who left their consoles on turned them off" is baffling.
Kate's post excoriates the article for blu-ray goofiness, and then offers this:
Console users are many things, but they don't tend to be stupid. They know that serious hardware problems are caused by overheating, and that overheating is caused by prolonged use. I would be shocked speechless if you actually provided some statistic - any statistic - showing that half of all XBox 360 owners leave their consoles on all the time, because that's how red rings of death happen, and most of us try to avoid those.
Maybe this is my bias as a predominantly PC gamer, but it's safe to say that your average 13-22 year old teen/college male who gets an Xbox for madden is markedly stupider and less tech savvy than us OCD Penny Arcade megaposters. If I didn't read gaming forums, I never would have heard of RROD - I expect many casual gamers are in the same boat. I honestly don't know what percentage of users leave their xbox on, but it's incontrovertible that if users who do so turned their system off, we'd see energy savings, and that consoles should be more energy efficient, especially because there will be some users who leave their console on all the time.
I get that there are methodological problems with estimating energy usage, but it's an even worse problem to attack those flaws and then extrapolate that the study is wrong because of them. The study is unquestionably correct in its conclusion, though it can be hard to measure the exact effects - that might be a problem if we want to, like I said, impose an externality energy tax on console manufacturers or decide to legislatively mandate some technological improvements in consoles. That doesn't make the study untrue.
I don't have the time to read through the entire article, but what does 'leaving the console on' mean? Does it mean having it running? Does it mean being plugged in, but on standby?
I know that the PS3 just had a power-save/sleep option added to it with the last firmware update....
Leaving it fully powered on running games 24/7 errrrrrrrrrryday.
And apparently 50% of all gamers do just that. That's half of them! Won't somebody think of the electricity?!
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A better estimate, in the absence of data, would be 5%. Call this your conservative estimate, and try to make your case there.
You should also include estimates of the number of people that would opt-out of power saving features.
Also, you should probably includes estimates of the actual amount of time that "always on" consoles are actually on, because I'm pretty sure that it isn't even close to 100%. 70-80% seems more reasonable.
If you have to make a case without supporting data, it's more convincing if you use more conservative estimates.
Not to be rude here, but even if they make those changes, at the end of the day you still come to the conclusion that "turning shit off saves power."
Why do we need a big study to show that? Wouldn't that be common sense?
Yeah, but it helps to articulate that position in a policy paper to affect an industry or policymakers.
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"this estimate is based on the assumption that half of all users leave their device on all the time"
Turning off devices may save electricity, further study required to confirm
Editing to put some debunkage up here in large, bold text:
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Hold on, let me break out the popcorn and lawnchair before I destroy this fucking argument again.
tl;dr is going to be pretty much the following:
1. Fuck you, technology is incredibly goddamn efficient right now compared to Ye Olden Days
2. The cost of gaming compared to other forms of entertainment is impressive
3. Tests are probably flawed
[strike]And a sidebar of stop using pictures like this:[/strike]
ToTaLlY eXtReMe GaMeR kId image removed, thank christ
[strike]To represent gamers. That's not even a fucking 360/PS3 controller he's holding.[/strike]
Also, welcome to the forums.
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But he has both joy sticks forward! Assuming he's using Inverted look he's AT THE EDGE LOOKING DOWN WITH ENGERY!!!!
When I am not at home I shut everything off. I like saving energy.
Thanks.
And welcome.
Power is equal to the derivative of AWESOME.
I don't play for days at a time. I go the extra step and unplug things I don't use, because they still consume electricity.
Like my Wii. (Sorry)
Maybe you should read the report before you go off. I'm not arguing consoles are NOT efficient, and neither is the report. The argument is that they consume energy, they ship with energy saving features DISABLED, and that nearly 50% of the gamers surveyed leave their consoles on all the time.
The fact that electronics are "incredibly efficient" doesn't change the raw numbers of power usage. Am I glad we only use 16 billion kilowatt hours of electricity instead of 36 or more? Yes, but enabling the energy saving features can reduce that number by 11 billion. That is an unarguably huge amount for a few simple steps. The majority of that savings can happen on the manufacturer end by changing those settings before the console hits the shelf.
Agree. This is far more accurate.
The average fridge (20cf, ~12 - 15 years old) consumes about 3.5kwh per day. This is roughly the same as leaving a 360 on and idling, but more than most PCs. The surpising thing is this took all of ten minutes of research to figure out and I find myself wondering how much these two organizations made to produce this report. How many resources were used up to tell people to use common sense?
Oh, I've read the article, and the arguments. Many times, in fact, because it's the same thing rehashed over and over.
Given ... the assumption that half of users leave their console on all the time
The problem is that this assumption, and the argument based on it, is bullshit. Hands up everyone here who doesn't run F@H who leaves their console on all the time.
Most users already shut their consoles off, and those who don't are usually PS3 owners running Folding@Home. And you can't fold with the console off. So there goes that argument.
Efficient power supplies? See above re: technology being pretty efficient already. It's a case of diminishing returns after the 80-90% efficiency mark.
Performance scaling? Sure, that's great at idle - but as we've established, most consoles have two settings - Off, and Being Used To Their Fullest Potential. Developers are trying to push the limits of the hardware, not "leave some headroom so that we can downclock the cores we aren't using." The only reason this would be useful in development is "If you're clocking down, you need to push the silicon harder."
About the only useful outcome from this is the suggestion "Improve Understanding of Video Game Console Usage" - because the people writing this report don't have a clue.
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Well, I think that they were trying to get at the aggregate effects, rather than the personal, either: a) to encourage the manufacturers to install power-down defaults in their machine, and/or; b) in the hopes that knowledge of the aggregate effect might encourage some individuals to power down when the knowledge of personal loss does not. As to the likelihood of their success in either endeavor, I express no opinion.
Ok, regardless of whether or not that assumption is true (personally, I think it's utterly false) - which of the recommendations do you disagree with? Adding in a 'sleep' mode for those idiots who don't turn off their consoles? Scaling down energy consumption during DVD and Blu-Ray playback to match those of regular players (which is where the performance scaling comes in)? Making power management options more visible or opt-out instead of opt-in to the user? While I'd consider their overall savings numbers to be inaccurate, that doesn't change the fact that there are some places that can be improved, and Microsoft and Sony should take steps to improve the efficiency of their consoles in certain areas.
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Those measures are already underway, without needing numbers fabricated from whole cloth to back them up.
I'm not questioning the study's outcomes as much as the combination of the need for the study and the inaccuracy of the data used to back it up.
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And, to get really nitpicky, I'd like to see them test each build of the consoles. It would probably also help to compare the consuption of consoles to that of computers and TVs (CRT vs. LCD, and varying size) to give a really good picture of what a given gamer is ultimately spending.
That said, if the report set out to simply prove that never turning off your system is wasteful, then it succeeded. Maybe now we should have a report on how much power and labour they used to prove something my four-year-old cousin could have told me.
I'm saying this with all due respect, and in the interest of keeping the conversation going - F@H has 340,000 active installs (across ALL platforms) - Global PS3 sales as of 2008 16.8 million. Sorry, but your F@H argument just doesn't fly with me.
In the absence of data, a better method of estimation is the Copernican Assumption, in which you do the calculation at 2.5 and 97.5% and present the range. Alternatively, you could have very easily conducted an informal poll that would have had far less error than your unsupported guess.
I read the article and it does give some good points. What mostly bothers me here is the "Given ... the assumption that half of users leave their console on all the time". It is assumptions like this that lead to reports of fear mongering and lousy investigating. I see your graphs and I don't like how one can assume a number and whatever sounds best (50%) is what you go with. That mean's if when or even if you did this poll and asked "do you leave your system on?" you got responses like this: yes, no, yes, no. That is just hard to believe.
EDIT: Also a better use of your time would be to market enegy saving light bulbs.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-LOtKIIKcg
http://www.topbulb.com/find/energy_saving_light_bulbs.asp
^ this is what we call concrete research.^
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Are we back in the cartridge era where people left their games on all the time or something? And even then you did it because some games you couldn't save your progress at any time like today.
He's saying that of those people who leave them on, they're usually running F@4.
Although, according to '50% land', 340k out of 8 million isn't most.
Hrm.
Here, I'll save you some legwork and do what you won't - research.
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=osstats
Total active CPUs for the PS3? 60369. That's less than one percent of all PS3 owners folding.
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And still, regardless of the ridiculous 50% assumption, there are some useful recommendations here.
Also, I'm really amazed at Nintendo's consistent low power usage throughout their history.
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There's a reason it's under the TL;DR heading - it's for those who wouldn't get that far. And it supports the argument perfectly - if you turn off your console when you're not using it, you've already reduced the annual power consumption by a factor of (hours running per day/24) and additional power savings won't help.
To make a terrible car analogy, it's like trying to say that implementing cylinder deactivation and regenerative braking on top fuel dragsters is a good idea. They're either on the trailer (off) or running at full throttle (gaming) - it'll only help those who were using it as a grocery-getter. In other words, the morons.
I don't mean to be this much of an asshole, but that's how I roll. Think of me as Penn Jillette if he got a a haircut.
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"The ends do not justify the means."
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Did you edit this? Was it edited at any point by anyone?
Speculation, ho! Rather than making wild guesses about what one can or cannot imagine, maybe you should have researched the issue in question. Blu-ray may have won the format war, but that doesn't mean anybody is actually going to *use* it. Have you seen the Blu-ray section in Blockbuster? It is fucking tiny. Most people just don't give a shit about marginally better quality, especially when most DVD players upscale anyway. Blu-ray doesn't represent the next stage in the evolution of video display; it's a niche little sidestep. Or to put it another way: Blu-ray isn't DVD 2.0, the future standard of visual media. It's more like Laserdisc 2.0. So, saying that future generations of the XBox will have Blu-ray support is about as intelligent and sensible as saying that future generations of the XBox will cure cancer with the aid of their onboard cold fusion power supplies.
No, you cannot do that in a paper that has any pretense of actual scientific validity. You cannot. You are not allowed. You can't take your precise measurements of power usage and your sales figures and then throw up your hands and say "We don't actually know how many people turn off their consoles, but Susan at the office says her son Billy fucking never powers his XBox down, so we're gonna apply that anecdotal experience to the total population and call it... say... half. Half of all console users never turn off their consoles!"
Console users are many things, but they don't tend to be stupid. They know that serious hardware problems are caused by overheating, and that overheating is caused by prolonged use. I would be shocked speechless if you actually provided some statistic - any statistic - showing that half of all XBox 360 owners leave their consoles on all the time, because that's how red rings of death happen, and most of us try to avoid those.
Also, the vast majority of modern games either give you the availability to save at any time (Fable 2, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, etc), or they use an autosave system with multiple, closely-spaced checkpoints (Gears of War 1 and 2, GTA IV, etc). Or they use both! With a possible few, rare exceptions, we're long past the days of needing to leave our Segas on overnight because we forgot to write down the last code for Road Rash 2 and we're on the last race. That shit just doesn't happen anymore.
I applaud your desire to improve the industry and all, it's really commendable, and I agree that every measure that can reasonably be taken to reduce power consumption should be taken. Auto-shutoff as a mandatory feature? Great! Sleep/standby modes for consoles? That'd be just swell. But if you expect something like this to be taken seriously by the people who actually play the games, do your fucking research first. Don't come in here with inaccurate, inconsistent, unproven bullshit and expect us to buy it.
Thank you for saying what I was trying to come out with, but it couldn't make it through the Asshole Filter.
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If I turn my PS3 off I'm saving the planet, if I leave it on I'm curing cancer.
Fuck yeah altruism!
You should also include estimates of the number of people that would opt-out of power saving features.
Also, you should probably includes estimates of the actual amount of time that "always on" consoles are actually on, because I'm pretty sure that it isn't even close to 100%. 70-80% seems more reasonable.
If you have to make a case without supporting data, it's more convincing if you use more conservative estimates.
Don't you get it, man? We're the cancer killing Mother Earth, using up all of her natural resources! Who's going to cure her? Duuuuuude!
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I know that the PS3 just had a power-save/sleep option added to it with the last firmware update....
Earth is using all of our natural resources. Not the other way around.
Leaving it fully powered on running games 24/7 errrrrrrrrrryday.
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Not to be rude here, but even if they make those changes, at the end of the day you still come to the conclusion that "turning shit off saves power."
Why do we need a big study to show that? Wouldn't that be common sense?
"Mother Earth - raped again. Guess who? 'Hey, she was askin' for it.'" - George Carlin
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Kate's post excoriates the article for blu-ray goofiness, and then offers this:
Maybe this is my bias as a predominantly PC gamer, but it's safe to say that your average 13-22 year old teen/college male who gets an Xbox for madden is markedly stupider and less tech savvy than us OCD Penny Arcade megaposters. If I didn't read gaming forums, I never would have heard of RROD - I expect many casual gamers are in the same boat. I honestly don't know what percentage of users leave their xbox on, but it's incontrovertible that if users who do so turned their system off, we'd see energy savings, and that consoles should be more energy efficient, especially because there will be some users who leave their console on all the time.
I get that there are methodological problems with estimating energy usage, but it's an even worse problem to attack those flaws and then extrapolate that the study is wrong because of them. The study is unquestionably correct in its conclusion, though it can be hard to measure the exact effects - that might be a problem if we want to, like I said, impose an externality energy tax on console manufacturers or decide to legislatively mandate some technological improvements in consoles. That doesn't make the study untrue.
Oh don't worry, I've got that shit covered. :P
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Yeah, but it helps to articulate that position in a policy paper to affect an industry or policymakers.