The San Jose Mercury News (bugmenot) reports that of the three seventh-gen gaming consoles, the Nintendo Wii has the smallest carbon footprint.
That is to say, it uses the least energy. This isn’t surprising — the Wii crunches the fewest polygons, so it’s cooler, which means less energy is required to power fans (or in the case of the Xbox 360, less power to melt the motherboard to slag).
Tech writer Dean Takahashi used a Kill A Watt to measure the power requirements of the three machines. The Wii uses 17 watts; the PlayStation 3 sucks down 171 watts; and the furnace-hot Xbox 360 chugs 194 watts.
Now, I own both a PS3 and an Xbox 360, so at any given time I’m consuming 171 or 194 watts, respectively. But I refuse to buy a Wii, which means I’m saving 17 watts. It’s my contribution to saving the Earth.
2 Comments
Wii sucks at everything, even at life.
Wii sucks at everything — except sucking.