The Nintendo Wii is the eco-friendly 'green' game console

Is your video game console a green console? A new study by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) shows the Nintendo Wii to be the greenest of the next-gen consoles.

In fact, comparing the Wii to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is like comparing the electric car to a couple of SUVs. While the Nintendo Wii uses just 16 watts of power while in active mode, the Xbox 360 uses 119 watts, which is over 7 times more than the Wii, and the PlayStation 3 uses 150 watts, which is almost 10 times more than the Wii.

But that doesn't mean you need to exchange your high-powered console for a Wii if you want to be eco-friendly. The NRDC study indicates that much of the energy used to power video game consoles is actually wasted. Simply powering down the console after use can save a whopping 90% of the energy costs.

Set Your Video Game Console to Automatically Turn Itself Off

Like many people, I tend to leave my Xbox 360 on after I finish playing it if I think I might play another game within an hour or two. And, like many people, that hour or two stretches out over the day. According to the study, this leads to much of the energy usage of these consoles.

Both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 have settings that will automatically power the machine down if they've been idle for an extended period of time, but these settings are turned off by default. Simply turning these settings on will translate to energy savings.

The eco-friendliness of game consoles is becoming more important as they turn into all-purpose entertainment systems. The PlayStation 3's ability to play Blu-Ray DvDs and the Xbox 360's ability to play Netflix instant-access movies shows a continuing trend for game consoles to become the central point of our entertainment systems, so it is becoming more important to be aware of the energy consumption of these machines.

You can download the NRDC study here.