Your home consoles such as the Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3, and the Xbox 360 are sucking much more from you than you can ever imagine. The PlayStation 3 requires 10 times more power than the Wii, or Xbox or any other of the consoles Choice Magazine tested. If you were to leave your PlayStation on while not playing anything you would rack up a pretty hefty bill of $250 a year in bills.
From personal experience, I remember leaving my PlayStation on for long periods of time with a game sitting in it, because, of course, I had no room to save, for days at a time. After reading up on the article I’ve learned that it has cost me more than just my time playing video games. It has cost me a lot of money.
But there is also a reason behind the power consumption of the PS3. If some of you gamers out there don’t know, the playStation uses 3.2 ghz cell processors which require a lot of energy to power their console, in most cases. True, it is more efficient (power) but it uses a lot of energy. There is a lot more hardware there to use and power than the Xbox and especially the Wii. Given the graphics are better on the Xbox but this is mainly because they just have a better GFX card in there. The PS3 wasn’t able to incorporate the same level of graphics because it wouldn’t be compatible with the processors.
But with more time and money spent on the PS, Sony has a much better chance at coming out with a console 10x better than that of Microsoft. But with the release of the Xbox 360, Sony rushed the PS3 out so they could compete and in turn had massive price tags and low sales figures. Although it is said that the Cell Processors in the 3rd series of the PS3 moved from 90nm process to a 65nm process. This was said to actually decrease the amount of power the console needed to run.
Although with all this information I’ve given you, I still believe both Microsoft and Sony have time to improve their products to conserve energy and still bring you a better gaming experience.
