How to be a 'green gamer' -- go retro

Now my neighbors officially think I'm crazy.

With the new movement towards 'green' living, we’ve all been asked to consider how we can be more energy efficient in our lives. Some people have decided to drive their vehicles less often. Others have switched their entire home to high efficiency light bulbs. While thinking of things I personally could do, I started thinking (as I often do) about videogames. More specifically, how much electricity gets used by your average gamer on a weekly basis? I started to do some preliminary math in my head, and quickly realized that modern consoles are burning through a ton of energy to bring us those fantastic high-definition moments of adrenaline fueled fun. But what’s a gamer to do? How can a gamer get just as much play time in and still reduce their ‘carbon footprint’? How can a gamer truly ‘go green’? It’s simple; go retro.

How much energy does that little green light use?

Let’s start at the easiest to quantify comparison. How much power does your average modern game console use? If you guessed more than ‘a little’, you’re absolutely correct! Now, seeing that I used all the space in my brain that you would normally keep math lessons to store all the Fatalities for the first three Mortal Kombat games, I had to turn to the interwebs for help on finding out how much juice a game console uses.

According to Google, the way to find out the energy usage of a device is to multiply the outlet voltage by the amperage listed on the device itself. In the case of devices that convert AC (alternating current) power to DC (direct current), simply use the voltage listed on the device. Armed with this knowledge, I reached for two systems; my XBox 360 and my Sega Genesis Model 2.

The Sega Genesis, if you’re not me and don’t bother committing this kind of stuff to memory, is the 16-bit video game console released by Sega in 1989. The Genesis is considered by many to be the defining system of the 16-bit era, and Sega made a fortune selling millions of them the world over. Now that we’re all caught up, let’s check the tale of the tape:

According to the handy label attached to the bottom of the Sega Genesis, this is a model MK-1631 and has a power rating of 10v DC and 0.85 Amps:

Sega Genesis = 10v x .85a = 8.5w

That looks pretty good. Now it’s time for an example of the current generation video game hardware, the Microsoft XBox 360.

Thankfully, I’d just gotten my shiny replacement unit from Microsoft yesterday, after dealing with my second bout of the dreaded Red Ring of Death. I had to squint to read it, but according to the very tiny print on the rear of the XBox 360, it uses 12v DC and 16.5 Amps. Let’s do the math on that one real quick:

XBox 360 = 12v x 16.5a = 198w

Egad. That’s quite a difference. Granted, being 16 years newer and infinitely more powerful in every way, those kinds of numbers were to be expected. But consider something for a moment; quite a few people download and play emulated versions of games like Ecco the Dolphin and Sonic the Hedgehog, both of which were originally released on the Sega Genesis. If we take it a step further and give an estimated time of completion to a game like Sonic, we can begin to quantify how much energy is burned playing what is essentially the same exact video game. For example:

Let’s say that you play Sonic the Hedgehog and complete the game in 3 hours. Now, let’s figure out how much energy it used being played on a Sega Genesis. To do this, we will need to find the Kilowatts per hour of the device, and then multiply that by the time spent using the system. To do this, we take the amount of watts from earlier, divide them by 1000, and then multiply that by 3 to get our total play time.

Sega Genesis = .0085 kilowatt-hour x 3 hours to complete = .0255kw

Now, lets use the same technique to find how much the XBox 360 used:

XBox 360 = .198 kilowatt-hour x 3 hours to complete = .594kw

Wow. That’s an almost absurd 2575% increase in energy usage just to play a little Sonic. Now, let’s break it down into numbers that really matter: cash money. According to UCAN.org, you multiply the kilowatt-hour figures of our two systems by 17.5¢ (the current market value of Kilowatts per hour) to determine how much it costs you to run that system for a period of time. Let’s take a look:

Sega Genesis = .0255kw x .175 = $0.004 (or four-tenths of a cent)
XBox 360 = .594kw = $0.103 (or ten and three tenths of a cent)

That certainly puts things into perspective a bit. I guess this whole time I’ve been obsessing over and playing old video games, I’ve actually been doing my part to save the planet, and my wallet. Go figure.

After being floored a bit by these numbers, I started looking around at other systems in the house to see if I just happened to randomly pick two systems with such a wide gamut between them. Nope. Check out the list below to get an idea. I’ve included the year the console was released to help put things in perspective:

• Colecovision (1982): 4.5w
• Super Nintendo (1991): 8.5w
• Atari Jaguar (1993): 10.8w
• Sega Saturn (1995): 25w
• Nintendo 64 (1996): 19w
• Sega Dreamcast (1999): 27w
• Nintendo Gamecube (2001): 39w

It’s pretty safe to say that as game systems get more powerful, they’re using a tremendous amount more energy to power their 1080p high-definition graphics and 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound. Also of note, based on the extremely rough example provided here, we can develop a clear picture that the jump to optical (CD and DVD) media increased the power requirements of game consoles as well, versus the old method of storing games on cartridges.

It seems that the lesson here is that the older the console, the less energy it is likely to use. So remember gamers; if you want to do your part in helping to conserve energy, turn off the Playstation 3 and fire up your NES. And honestly, isn’t Pitfall actually more fun than Gears of War?

Yeah, I think so too.

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