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Xbox has been working on its console power consumption rate as of late, with sweeping changes recently made to Xbox Series X and S to help ensure the systems run more efficiently. Well, it's looking like Microsoft could be willing to take things a step further, even offering game performance-altering modes to reduce power usage.
A new Xbox Insider Program survey, spotted by Windows Central, has been sent out to a set of Xbox users in the preview program. The survey includes a question on whether players would make use of options such as resolution and frame rate reductions in order to save on console power usage. Here's how one question from Microsoft reads:
"In general, how would you feel about having in-game features that can optimize settings to save energy if you toggled them on? (Note: Game settings adjustments could be things like resolution, frame rate, visual effects, or GPU)"
Although this would be opt-in if Microsoft introduced the above idea, the survey also goes on to ask whether players would be okay with automatic performance adjustments being made when idle or inactive, to save energy.
At present this is only pulled from an Insider Program survey; Microsoft hasn't announced any intention to make this a proper feature just yet. Ongoing energy-saving practises are being explored by the company though, so this sort of feature could potentially come to fruition in the coming years.
How do you feel about this being a potential Xbox feature in future? Let us know in the comments below.
[source windowscentral.com]
Comments 46
W-what? Rofl this just sounds so stupid
As long as it’s optional and not forced upon us.
I bought the world's most powerful console because I wanted the best graphics and frame rate, not because I wanted options to lower my power consumption. They are wasting their efforts and need to put that energy into making 4K games at 60-120 FPS. Period.
So basically Xbox series X/S remastered to an Xbox One-X! Lol
@OliverOwen And work out the kinks with the ray tracing feature which was one of the main selling points of this new generation.
Less power consumption is a great goal.
BUT I can hear developers groaning. One of the main benefits of console over PC is that the fixed architecture means developers can easily optimise games for that precisely hardware.
But this is changing.
We already have several graphics modes on some games and 2 SKUs (XSX and XSS) for each next gen game. If you start adding even MORE variables to each SKU in the form of several power modes... not to mention different consoles... then the amount of work multiplies quickly and we start to lose that advantage. Optimisation will become a chore and many devs will stop spending as long optimising each of the different modes.
I think this needs to be thought out more clearly.
What is with this obsession in reducing power consumption? I don't think any of us are buying high-end game consoles because we want to have the most low-powered gaming option, save that for portables like the Switch and Steam Deck, where those reductions can actually stand to have some benefit.
When it comes to home consoles they are already far more efficient than having a gaming PC, I don't think we need to be doing anything to compromise them even further. That and it's like we buy these fancy consoles and TV's for a good reason, to enjoy the best of what's out there. Making all sorts of reductions sounds like it's just the opposite of why people buy this stuff in the first place.
And yet we are lead to believe we should all own Electric vehicles. What would that impact look like if we are all gaming while we are charging our cars and trucks for the next day of work? I game around 1-4 hours a day and watch little to no TV, unless a sports game is on that i want to see. So i don’t think i will use this but sure seems like if we all had electric vehicles there would be a big issue. Like i can’t drive to work cause my car didn’t charge full enough last night.
Series S average for modern games in 4k with internet use, is around 89wph. 1080 it drops to 81wph. Back compatible games it's 63ish. I'd love to see it drop farther, especially for the off-gridders.
JayJ wrote:
Climate change. Wasted energy consumption. Dates of promises made on energy consumptions fast approaching. When you are a giant multinational tech company you have some corporate responsibility to make some hard choices for the masses.
Like the Series S|X at launch which gobbled far too much energy even in standby. They've since made it much better.
Yes I agree consoles are generally much more efficient than gaming PCs but that's not a good benchmark. That would be like using China's greenhouse gas emissions as a benchmark and saying we are all fine because we're using less.
But I agree it's a tough area, many of us buy the new hardware for their additional power not using it seems silly. I think the key thing here is efficiency. Trying to make them as efficient as possible while keeping them powerful. That is an admirable goal. Though as I said in a post above I don't think this particular idea from MS is a very good one.
But I also think we need to have an honest conversation about if we SHOULD keep chasing higher graphical fidelity and what that costs. E.g. Should GPU's than need a 1000W PSU's even exist outside of a few professional workstations? Perhaps set a maximum power budget and see what AMD/Nvidia et al can do with it. It's amazing what companies can do when forced. [EDIT] E.g. see EC's directives on power consumption of standby on small electricals which annually saves more than the energy consumption of a country like Romania.
We can and should do more here. So many so called 'vampire-devices' just eating up energy unused.
I think Microsoft could make significantly more difference to the world by buying and manufacturing in a better way to start with.
Selling me on '12 Teraflops of power' only to ask me to use only half of it seems like a pretty silly message and realistically wont make much of a difference anywhere.
This is one bandwagon they did not need to jump onto....
Yeah this is ridiculous. If all of these companies, not just Microsoft, are so concerned about power consumption and climate change then why are they still using China to mass produce most of their products who dont give a ***** about it.
And that is why I think that Microsoft and Xbox should bet more on gaming in the cloud, many expenses on electricity, hardware and equipment would be reduced.
Power draw is already different depending on how much a game taxes the system, and PC have had things like step-down power and the ability to turn off CPU cores for many, many years now.
Developers are used to it - when first introduced, used to see lots of issues on PC games conflicting with power settings, but most now cope with it or even optimise with it.
I expect this is more for less graphically strenuous games - for example Untitled Goose Game didn't really push my XSX so power usage could have been reduced massively...
@Titntin
I have made my peace with Microsoft now.
I shall take notice of them when they actually release something worthy of taking my time.
And we know what that means big new AAA games that can match Sonys.
I think this sounds like a cool idea - especially with how crazy the cost-of-living effects are being felt (in the UK at least).
The only way this would work would be for it to function on a platform level (and therefore not require dev-input). I'm not an engineer so I have no idea how this could work but imagine if we could run a game on the Series X using the Series S 'profile' - this would be a good solution for those who want to use less power and presumably would not require extra work?
Just an idea I've thought of, but I think it's an interesting possibility.
Buys £450 gaming console and very expensive TV to take advantage of it but then wants to turn it down to save a few pennies on the electricity 🤔🤔🤔
Absolutely not and the amount of money you'd save is negligible
Nobody is ever going to toggle something like that on a console he bought for so much money.
Everything about the "turn off completely" feature is good (I'm doing it all the time) but something that will effect your gaming experience is a total nonsense, in my opinion.
I think its a great idea also dont force it upon us give us options to toggle it and save money on power consumption saves more money to pay for increase on gamepass coming soon
@SecretAgentCat that's not gonna happen anytime soon, AMD's implementation just isn't very good
@carlos82 Yeah if anybody is so concerned about their power bill, I doubt making your game console a bit more efficient is going to make much of a difference. You would probably be much better off looking into your large appliances and other things like lighting and so on. Maybe you could use solar to offset your power use or something, there's lots of solutions that can actually have a notable effect. What they're trying to do with game consoles here, it's like a drop in a bucket.
Even for off the grid people, they would probably be better off simply not embracing high-end electronics if their power setup can't handle it. Maybe just stick with low-powered hardware like handhelds. It's hard for me to see what the market is for this.
That's one of the craziest ideas I've heard. Why buy a $500+ console made in Chinese factories out of toxic parts to then dial it down so it doesn't get used to "save the planet"? Just don't buy it. Problem solved.
If they want to "save" the planet, how about getting out of the electronics business, stop innovating electronics so they don't become obsolete, make them all user servicable and replaceable, no hardwired batteries. We could "save the planet" if we bought one computer/phone/console that lasted the rest of our lives without going obsolete unless it breaks. We can "innovated" technology every 65 years or so.
But I don't see any company championing this approach for some reason.
Won’t use it. At all.
Absolutely ludicrous. What next? - a washing machine that doesn’t quite make your clothes clean?, a toaster that ‘nearly’ toasts your bread?, a kettle that makes water warm but doesn’t boil water? Ridiculous- I’ve bought the most powerful console on the planet to play the best games at the highest resolution and frame rates. Don’t try and ‘dumb down’ the Xbox experience.
Standby energy saving mode makes sense, but don’t restrict performance while I’m using the device.
For those trying to reduce their use of energy there are far more sensible ways to reduce power consumption than this virtue signalling nonsense.
A lot of weird takes on this idea. I personally don’t mind the power consumption (energy costs are not that high for me) but I can see various cases where it might be an issue. I have seen people hook PS5s and XSXs to 1080p TVs or monitors. If the game that is being played is running at 4k, it’s likely a waste of power.
Now that aside, I lately been thinking I would love for console games, at least Xbox ones, to allow me to pick graphic settings as granularly as the PC version.
Let me cherry pick, via some standard options that pop when pressing the home button from within the game, my own frame rate targets, resolutions, antialiasing levels, and all that stuff that is common on PC. Maybe I can come up with my own settings that get me 60fps without bells and whistles the devs insisted on enabling by default. Don’t force players to wait for the dev to provide a performance preset that makes them happy.
@Feffster i don’t know if you are being sarcastic. All washing machines provide multiple energy saving settings for less demanding jobs.
Toasters come with multiple settings that don’t toast the bread to be extra crispy (sometimes some one just wants warm or lightly toasted bread.)
You can just set the stove to low fire to only get warm water in a kettle.
And Xbox is not talking about forcing anyone into these settings, but giving players the option to enable the low power mode.
The outrage over a potential toggleable option makes me laugh. If it's a choice, I can't understand how simply ignoring it affects those who want higher power consumption. What am I missing here?
@Tharsman - no sarcasm intended. And I’d advise against your suggestion of “warm water in the toaster”!? Lol.
The point I’m making is that a setting to limit the console’s performance so that it only does “half a job” is daft. If I wanted a lower performing machine than my Series X then I’d opt for a Series S (or an Xbox One).
If people want to save energy then there are a million and one other ways which make far for sense than limiting frame-rates on high end consoles.
@Feffster duh I meant warm water in the kettle.
Anyways, yea there are other ways but every bit helps. Also as I mentioned in my other post: there are people playing these consoles on non-4k displays, some that can’t even display more than 30fps. Anyone playing in such settup (likely because they can’t afford a new TV) would likely benefit from such a feature (they are also likely to want I save a buck on power bills.)
I actually like the idea of an optional 1080p cap, as it could offer better performance in some games, with no noticeable downsides to those of us with plain old HD screens.
No way would I accept having this stuff turned on automatically, though (also see: Texas thermostat fiasco).
Also, turning down the graphics on our games to save a bit of power might feel good, but it isn't realistically going to help the earth in any way. And if you live in a region with a broken billing system on electricity usage, it might not save you money, either!
Maybe it's different over in the States but in the UK, energy bills have shot through the roof due to various reasons and that was the even before Russia started playing silly buggers with their pipeline which has only exacerbated the issue.
I don't think I'd use an option like this but I thought I would provide some context to the reasons why MS may be investigating it.
I got the Series X on the purpose to play videogames in 4K / 60fps or higher. Isn't that the point of 'next-gen' consoles in the 1st place? If Microsoft / Sony / Nintendo is so anxious of console power consumption vs climate change, then why on Earth are they forcing players to constantly be online to download entire games, firmware and game updates, etc. (spending up to an entire day doing so depending on the game filesize and internet speed) even though they got discs. The unnecessary power consumption doing that is worse than actually installing the game from the disc.
"In general, how would you feel about having in-game features that can optimize settings to save energy if you toggled them on? (Note: Game settings adjustments could be things like resolution, frame rate, visual effects, or GPU)"
Sounds like there was no point in buying a new Xbox and could have just gotten a 360 at a yard sale.
@themightyant
Take it easy with the mainstream media!! 😂
@Fenbops Bingo!
I'd welcome features that'd automatically reduce idle power consumption. I'm not sure how optimised the Xbox is when not running at full speed as you don't need much processing power when watching streaming video, etc.
@Dezzy70 what does Sony have that's so great this gen. Until tomorrow (Ragnarok) my PS5 has one game worth playing and it's a remake. That argument held water last gen when they did have more and better but now I personally wouldn't trade Xbox's exclusives that are out now for sonys nevermind the massive lineup coming in the next years. It's basically the god of war station at this point. Xbox is better in almost every way even now, God help Sony next year especially if/when A/B goes through. All Sony does is copies Xbox features and business direction, they do nothing new on their own and Sony fans praise them for it. Without their brand loyalty they'd have sh*t. Gamepass alone makes Xbox vastly Superior
As long as it's optional I'm fine with it, I'll probably rarely if ever use it but by all means go ahead. When the Xbox is in idle you can do whatever you want with it to make it draw less power. Having said all that the pretentious self righteous idea that we can halt climate change by doing piddly sh*t like this and driving electric cars which have to charge from somewhere like coal power plants since the Dems don't like nuclear power, is completely laughable. Especially when the ones barking all the orders down to us are by far the biggest polluters flying around the country on jets that put out more pollution in an hour that I do all year. The day Nancy Pelosi and Chuck the schmuck Schumer start biking to work and move out of their mansions I'll start listening. Until then they're nothing but hypocrites.
hey so we know you got a series x/s but how would you feel running it in xbox one x mode for the climate... F off ill just turn off a light or two extra... you dont go and buy new powerful hardware then go hey you know what ill save a few pennies if i run it in a lower res....maybe MS should instead refine its chip and make it more efficient like you know consoles have done for like ever!!!!
@OliverOwen er.... You do know the team working on this doesn't work on games lol what you are talking about is up to the devs making the games
@FreqMode
To me game pass is only superior when they start release NEW top quality AAA games day one.
In two years the only game that did it for me in that way was FH5, top AAA game.
Others like Halo Infinite were terrible overall consider the franchise and time spent on it.
So there you go, let’s see these amazing NEW top end AAA gameS first then let’s judge game pass.
If you into AA and Indies and old games then game pass works well.
@Titntin they aren't asking anyone too.... They are saying they are giving those the option to lower power consumption.
It's just like on a PC where you can lower your power consumption if you wish
@Blessed_Koz Microsoft doesn't make the chip.... That would be up to AMD
@Dezzy70 well that's why it's called a opinion. However game pass is not about first party AAA only games.... It's about offering games in general to gamers
@PupTwilight
You are absolutely right and spot on.
I like new big AAA games so S has done that for me. Sack boy, ratchet and clank, Returnal, demon souls, HFW, GOWR, miles morales and some added dlc for GOT They are new to me.
Now X gave me FH5 and little bit of Halo Infinite campaign. Game pass or purchased that’s all they have given me for my game tastes.
No the big Xbox360 and Xbox one games I played and enjoyed and purchased, I don’t want to play them again. I want new big AAA Xbox games.
It’s just simple preference that’s all.
Auto power use reduction while idling would be nice and the option to lower the resolution and/or fps would be useful if you used a TV that didn't support the higher resolutions and/or fps because you'd get no use from running it full quality anyways. But people with a 4k/60fps+ TV aren't going to want to cripple their gaming experience for maybe $10/year in energy savings.
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