Just like the design and remote controller, power consumption is also one of the key points that are under thorough discussion these days. With “Go Green” being the buzzword today, critics expect that Sony might decide to join the Go Green revolution and market a completely Green product in form of the PS4, which will consume almost very low power levels.
Well, let aside very low power levels, something that Sony will have to ensure in PS4 would be substantial relief in terms of the power sucking capability of their next generation gaming console. Everyone is pretty well aware of the fact that the PS3 is such a big power sucker.
In fact, you might be shocked to hear that just leaving your PS3 switched on (yes, we’re talking about the idle state) for a year would cost you a whooping $157! On the contrary, if you play it round the clock 365days a year, it’ll just cost you about 8-10bucks more – what utter waste of energy, isn’t it?
However, it will be pretty tough to manage the heavy upgrades in performance in an eco-friendly design, especially without an optical media in the storage drive (assuming that PS4 will operate online and games will be downloaded rather than being saved on DVD/Blu-Ray disks or hard drives).
Therefore, it can be only regarded as a sweet speculation, which looks so hard to be a reality; nevertheless Sony will have to badly ensure that the PS4 doesn’t follow up in the line up of the most expensive electronic/electrical appliances to run, even in the stand-by or idle mode.
Microsoft’s X-Box 360 isn’t too good either as it would cost you around $125 per year even if you leave it idle, but the Nintendo’s Wii is totally the opposite. It is estimated that Wii won’t even cost about $15 per year, if left idle.
So, the next gen X-Box and PlayStation gaming consoles will surely have to give a damn to the power consumption, if they want to stay competitive with the Wii2.
Furthermore, if Sony doesn’t do anything about the power sucking nature of PS3 and double the performance level in PS4, it would be indeed scary to imagine how much power the PS4 will really suck, even if you leave it on for a couple of months and go on a tour.