Just like design and remote control, power consumption is also one of the hotly debated key points these days. With “Go Green” being the buzzword these days, critics are hoping that Sony will decide to join the Go Green revolution and market a completely eco-friendly product in the form of the PS4, which will consume almost very low power levels.
Well, very low power levels aside, something Sony will have to guarantee on PS4 would be a substantial relief in terms of its next-gen gaming console’s power-absorbing capabilities. Everyone is quite aware of the fact that the PS3 is a huge power consumer.
In fact, you might be surprised to learn that leaving your PS3 on (yes, we’re talking about the idle state) for a year would cost you a whopping $157. On the contrary, if you play it 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, it will cost you 8-10 dollars more. What a waste of energy, right?
However, it will be quite difficult to manage the huge performance gains in a green design, especially without optical media in the storage drive (assuming the PS4 will work online and games will be downloaded rather than saved to DVD/Blu – lightning disks or hard drives).
Therefore, it can only be considered as a sweet speculation, which seems so hard to be a reality; However, Sony will have to make sure that the PS4 doesn’t follow the lines of more expensive electronic/electrical devices to function, even on standby or idle.
Microsoft’s X-Box 360 isn’t very good either, running you around $125 per year even if you let it sit idle, but Nintendo’s Wii is anything but. It is estimated that the Wii will not even cost around $15 per year, if left idle.
So next-generation X-Box and PlayStation game consoles will surely have to worry about power consumption, if they want to remain competitive with the Wii2.
Also, if Sony does nothing about the power-hungry nature of the PS3 and doubles the performance level of the PS4, it would be scary to imagine how much power the PS4 will actually consume, even if you leave it on for a couple of minutes. months and go on tour.