“Now, system and game updates can be downloaded during Energy Saver mode, further saving energy,” explains Dave McCarthy, corporate vice president of Xbox operations. “Energy Saver mode consumes about 20 times less power than Standby mode when the console is not being used or receiving updates.”
Microsoft has now made Energy Saver mode the default option when Xbox owners initially set up a console. The Energy Saver mode does mean it’s slower to resume your Xbox, particularly on older Xbox One consoles. The latest Xbox Series S / X consoles boot so quickly that the tradeoff in energy use is definitely worth enabling Energy Saver, especially coupled with game and system updates supported in the background.
Elsewhere, Microsoft has also switched to using post-consumer recycled (PCR) resins on its Xbox Series S consoles. “At a minimum, 28% of the mechanical component plastic by weight in the updated Series S console is post-consumer recycled (PCR) resin,” says McCarthy.
Microsoft has also embedded an “enhanced power monitoring system” in a small number of consoles for anonymous telemetry collection. “This is key because accurate, per unit telemetry helps us identify the best opportunities to introduce future improvements that will help us save power,” explains McCarthy. Microsoft is also looking to improve Xbox Cloud Gaming. Since it’s powered by Azure, Microsoft will shift to a 100 percent supply of renewable energy by 2025.
All of these sustainability efforts are part of Microsoft’s broader pledge to become carbon negative by 2030. A lot of this involves Microsoft’s data centers, and the company has also been ramping up its plans to make its data centers less thirsty by cooling servers without using water.
Microsoft’s overall goals will be challenging to achieve, and the software maker admitted today that some of its emissions have increased year over year. “Our experience this past year has provided us with critical and additional early learning on our path towards our 2030 carbon negative milestone, and we are applying this learning quickly with additional measures to strengthen efforts to reduce our Scope 3 emissions,” says Microsoft president Brad Smith.
Wait! The “keep my games and apps up to date” option actually works for someone? It doesn’t matter what energy mode mine is in, it’s never up to date.
Mine has almost always worked perfectly. Do you have enough free storage space? That’s the only time mine has ever broken – if I need to delete something to make room for an update
Nearly always works for me.
The only manual updates needed have been when I got to play something the same day that the update is pushed, as my console updates automatically overnight, so if you haven’t given it the opportunity to update then you will need to perform the update.
What console are you on? Never worked on my One S, though it seems to be working on my Series X so far.
So when exactly is this gonna be available ? With like the next stable OS update or is this just for insiders ?
Update: Just tried it, seems to be working for me already. I absolutely love this, this removes the biggest trade-off when using energy saver mode.
Wait, so there is an updated Series S? I missed this. Is it already in the wild? Any other differences? I just picked one up (haven’t even opened the box) so I’m wondering how I might tell the difference.
Sounds like it’s just using a more environmentally responsible plastic and a small subset of shipped units have some hardware to collect data around power usage (that personally I wouldn’t want being sent anyway as I usually opt out of telemetry).
Don’t think there’s anything considerable or worth worrying about. If you want to monitor power usage you could always just use a smart plug to track this. If this is just silent gathering as suggested it doesn’t sound like users will be able to see the data anyway.
If that’s the case, then no big deal. It was more the casual way the Xbox guy threw it out there, that there was this updated Series S. I guess when he said it, he just meant the case was updated with the recycled materials.
Man that’s pretty cool. I was always bummed about this. Didn’t think they would even consider it.
Right there with you. I wanted to reduce energy consumption, but not have to wait for a 1/2 hour to download the latest Halo update when I’m finally ready to play some. Now it’s best of both worlds hopefully, will turn this on later.