As part of Earth Day 2024, Microsoft has broken down a number of new initiatives going on at Xbox right now - including a brand-new "solar-powered studio" at Sea Of Thieves developer Rare.
This new studio, also known as 'Barn X', opened last year - and it's since been "certified LEED GOLD for its design and construction". To put it simply, the new barn has been designed from the ground up to be environmentally friendly; being mass-timber built and featuring 480 solar panels that provide lots of power to the building.
Here's what Rare studio head Craig Duncan had to say about the barn, which was started back in 2020:
"Our new barn is a demonstration of leading-edge sustainability and environmental design, creating a model green workplace. The opportunity to expand our campus by building a state-of-the-art environment for our teams while supporting Microsoft to achieve its sustainability goals has been genuinely rewarding.
The new space design promotes collaboration, creativity and wellbeing, which are essential ingredients for a team to create fun experiences for players everywhere."
Xbox's Earth Day 2024 blog post also goes over a number of other initiatives going on right now, including the recently-released 'Remix' controller, the team's console energy saving features, a developer 'Sustainability Toolkit' and lots more.
These moves stretch to the games themselves as well. Minecraft is involved in its own education program relating to the BBC's 'Planet Earth' series, while Team Green has also namedropped Lightyear Frontier, Coral Island and Stardew Valley as just a few Xbox titles that enable players to "explore games with environmental themes on Game Pass".
The team has some lofty goals when it comes to being more environmentally-friendly — including Microsoft becoming 'carbon negative' by 2030 — and it's making sure that any current and future moves bear this in mind too. The team mentions Activision Blizzard King right at the end of its blog post, saying that it's "excited to welcome one of America’s Greenest Companies 2024, to Team Xbox".