PS3 Consumes 10 Times More Power Than Wii

If you decided to join Nintendo’s camp with your purchase of a Wii, pat yourself on the back for making the greenest choice available… by far. A study by Choice in Australia revealed the electricity costs of running a Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 in various states like off, idle, and game playing with comparisons of everyday household electronics for reference. Mind you these costs are in Australian dollars.

In the off state, the consoles don’t differ by much and eat up about $2-$3 worth of electricity per year. If you’ve ever wondered how much turning WiiConnect24 on is costing you, it’s actually quite a bit with the bill jumping to $14 in a year. While it doesn’t seem like much, consider that this is equivalent to more than half the cost of playing games on the Wii non-stop for a year at $26… even though it’s in an “off” state. I’m definitely going to be disabling WiiConnect24 from now on.

But that’s still nothing compared to the electricity that the Xbox 360 and PS3 eat up when running under a load. The Xbox 360 rings up a very ungreen cost of $204 a year while the PS3 costs, brace yourself, a whopping $261! That’s exactly ten times more electricity consumed than the Wii. Sure we know the Wii isn’t as capable a machine as the PS3 but we also all know it’s more about gameplay and fun rather than hardware muscle. Plus it’s not like the PS3 is ten times as capable to justify the cost. Let this be a lesson that impressive hardware capabilities do not come cheap, both in console purchasing and operating costs.

To give a perspective, a plasma television costs nearly the same a year ($232) while your computer costs about half as much to run ($130). More information on energy costs of the gaming consoles plus a bunch of other interesting appliances is available on choice.com.au.

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