Xbox Unveils New Update for Consoles to Make Them Carbon Aware and Decrease Lower Carbon Emissions

Microsoft’s efforts to be sustainable has seeped into Xbox, as the company’s gaming brand unveils its latest attempt to reduce its carbon footprint.

As part of its newest update, Xbox and Microsoft inches closer to the latter’s efforts to be “a carbon negative, water positive, and zero waste company by 2030.” The Redmond-based company has already implemented several measures with its software, such as Windows Update, which became carbon aware on Windows 11 PCs last year.

This year sees Xbox consoles becoming carbon aware as mentioned in a recent Xbox Wire post. For those unaware with the term carbon aware, it means reducing a product like a console’s carbon footprint by “optimizing updates and downloads to run at a time when the console can use the most renewable energy.”

Xbox is now the first gaming console to offer carbon aware game downloads and updates. Learn more: https://t.co/ULLxUm0UVf

— Xbox Wire (@XboxWire) January 11, 2023

So, how do Xbox consoles achieve this? A plugged console like the Series X|S with Internet connectivity will allow it to have access to regional carbon intensity data. With the help of this data, the console will then “schedule game, app, and OS updates for your console at specific times during the nightly maintenance window that may result in lower carbon emissions.”

This means that instead of waking up at a random time at night for the nightly maintenance, the console smartly chooses a time, when it can use the most amount of renewable energy from your power grid.

The update which is available to Xbox Insider members also now allows Xbox Series X|S consoles to automatically update to the Shutdown (energy saving) power option. According to Xbox, this feature helps cut power consumption by 20X when it’s off compared to Sleep. The option is already available for Xbox One users.

Another sustainability feature for Xbox Series X|S consoles is called Active Hours. With this option, you can choose the number of active hours for your console, and only during these hours can your console boot quickly and have remote wake. On non-active hours, the console will shut down, and it will draw 0.5 W of power, compared to 1-1.5W when it’s active.

To know more about Xbox’s efforts to become sustainable, head over to xbox.com/sustainability.