1 week Ago By Paul Thurrott
Microsoft’s Xbox business today said that it has made meaningful progress towards achieving its carbon reduction commitments in just three years: Thanks to reduced energy consumption in its video game consoles, it has prevented the release of over 1.2 million metric tons of CO2e, the equivalent of preventing over 3 billion car miles (driven by an average gasoline-powered passenger vehicle) being released into the atmosphere. “Microsoft has set ambitious commitments to meaningfully reduce our environmental impact and become a carbon negative, water positive and zero waste company by 2030, [and] Xbox plays an important role in achieving this,” .
“Xbox has contributed to this goal with interventions that include greening game code–with game developers leveraging the –and players opting in to using the active hours, and carbon aware updates on Xbox consoles.” Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift! The Xbox Sustainability Toolkit has been implemented across 343 Industries (while making ), Activision (starting with and ), and many others.
And with ongoing improvements, including a new Dynamic Power States API that shipped this past June, it hopes to see further improvements going forward. But new power management functionality has contributed even more. Microsoft introduced carbon-aware game downloads and updates to Xbox in 2023, a new Shutdown (energy saving) power option that reduces power consumption while the console is turned off and can cut power use by up to 20X when compared to Sleep, and the active hours energy setting.
. Paul Thurrott is an award-winning technology journalist and blogger with 30 years of industry experience and the author of 30 books. He is the owner of and the host of three tech podcasts: with Leo Laporte and Richard Campbell, , and with Brad Sams.
He was formerly the senior technology analyst at Windows IT Pro and the creator of the SuperSite for Windows from 1999 to 2014 and the Major Domo of Thurrott.com while at BWW Media Group from 2015 to 2023. You can reach Paul via , or .
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