Sony has announced that the PlayStation 5 is tackling climate change head-on with a new Rest Mode option that allows the system to consume less power than its predecessor. The news comes in wake of the PlayStation manufacturer teaming up with other industry leaders as part of Playing for the Planet, a new initiative to combat climate change.
PS5 Rest Mode Detailed
Jim Ryan, president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, confirmed the feature in a post on the PlayStation Blog:
The next generation PlayStation console will include the possibility to suspend gameplay with much lower power consumption than PS4 (which we estimate can be achieved at around 0.5 W). If just one million users enable this feature, it would save equivalent to the average electricity use of 1,000 US homes.
For context, we estimate the carbon emissions we have avoided to date already amount to almost 16 million metric tons, increasing to 29 million metric tons over the course of the next 10 years (which equals the CO2 emissions for the nation of Denmark in 2017).
While gas-guzzling vehicles might immediately spring to mind when you think of the main offenders of climate change, gaming also has a lot to answer for. For example, a report discovered that 12 million tons of carbon dioxide is emitted every year from gamers in North America, which is the equivalent to 2.3 million automobiles.
The PS5 is reportedly due for release in holiday 2020, which means it should be out around the same time as the Xbox Scarlett from Microsoft.
While the system is still a long way off, Sony has already confirmed that it will support a wide range of features, including backwards compatibility with PS4 games, an SSD for reduced loading times, 8K support, and ray-tracing.
Stay tuned to PSU.com for more details on the PS5 as they become available.
Source: PlayStation Blog