New Microsoft Toolkit Will Measure Real-Time Xbox Energy Use (bloomberg.com) 25
How much energy does it take to play Xbox? Microsoft is helping developers find out. At the 2023 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the company announced a new toolkit for developers to measure real-time energy consumption from Xbox games. From a report: The toolkit, which Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft calls the first of its kind in the industry, will allow developers using the Xbox platform to monitor real-time energy use of the games they create -- "down to the nearest millisecond," the company noted in a press release. It will also help Microsoft establish a baseline for Xbox games, which could then serve as a benchmark for developers. The company hopes game-makers will also leverage the toolkit to experiment with approaches that reduce energy consumption. Some 60 years after the debut of the world's first video game, the industry has grown into a $214 billion global juggernaut. With that growth comes an increased environmental impact -- but one that can be difficult to quantify with precision, particularly as it varies widely by console, game and system setup.
Get a Kill-A-Watt meter. It'll measure anything (Score:1)
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Came to post this. I have one on my series X and it uses 150-200W while gaming. When I get extreme rendering lag, my power consumption is actually sitting around 170W
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Fan prolly aren't helping things.
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Sure, you can get a meter pretty easily. But if you want developers to pay attention, you need to make it easy for them to see the results.
Also, it'll make things a lot easier if you can tie the power readings into your existing development workflow. Devs are more likely to notice if you make it as easy to monitor as it is to monitor FPS/CPU Load/etc.
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Yep. Measurement over time into a file is the biggest missing piece. But also details inside the system... like where is the powder being used can sometimes be divined.
Local and remote energy (Score:2)
But please realise it's not just the local energy consumptions, some of the more recent games require a network connection and that (cloud) is also using electricity.
Of course the cloud provider has preferable costs for their electricity but it is not zero.
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some of the more recent games require a network connection and that (cloud) is also using electricity.
This is pointless whataboutism. The server resources required to handle "phone home" connections is miniscule when spread across the number of users to the point it would disappear in noise. The network equipment between the user and the server is a sunk costs that sits there and runs regardless if you're playing xbox or not.
I'm all for a rant against pointless irrelevant network connectivity, but lets keep it relevant.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:1)
This has beneficial uses, but am I the only one who sees the potential for tracking or other abuse?
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Yes.
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This has beneficial uses, but am I the only one who sees the potential for tracking or other abuse?
If the games are anything like mobile apps, there's probably already telemetry libraries phoning home all sorts of data about your interaction and usage patterns. I'm sure it's buried in the TOS somewhere that you're agreeing to the tracking for "product improvement purposes" or something along those lines. It's pretty much an inescapable part of having devices with an always-on internet connection.
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It's a tool for Xbox developers. What will Microsoft possibly get here that they're not already getting? Everyone who can use this tool is already using Visual Studio with the Xbox extensions and the DirectX performance monitoring tools. All this does is add one more data point to the mix. You could probably even roughly estimate the power usage from the data already being generated by the CPU & GPU usage monitoring tools.
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Achievements is basically mass tracking. And then there's possibly hidden "achivements" as well.
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This is a developer tool. It runs on development Xboxes so developers can profile their game for energy usage like they profile their games for framerate, GPU/GPU/RAM utilization.
It's not for running retail code - just profiling their game's power usage during debug and test.
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You're not alone. I'd hope they aim to make it "local only", but things like speculative execution and diagnostic API's have had issues in the past on CPU's. Where you can watch for something hard to come through, like cryptography hashing. Then attempt to get additional details some other way.
I don't think it's a reason to throw the baby out though.
I'd be happy if... (Score:2)
...the surround sound actually worked correctly on the new Xbox. Which it doesn't.
Hours spent on the phone with Microsoft. Every setting, and cable setup imaginable. Two different amplifiers tested. It's definitely a bug on their end. Works perfectly in the built in test...but not in games and apps. I'm surprised more people haven't encountered it...but I guess most are using headsets now?
(Audio on previous gen Xbox works just fine with same home theater setup)
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It's probably a known low-priority issue, because the number of people with a proper surround sound setup is going to be less than 10% of the market. If people aren't using the speakers built into the TV, they're probably using a sound bar. Only the people that really give a shit are going with separate receivers and discrete audio channels these days.
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Yeah, I'm sure that's it. I had to very clearly state, multiple times, "THERE IS NO SOUND BAR...IT IS A SEPARATE AMPLIFIER"...and they always seemed somewhat confused by this? There's nothing particularly exotic about my setup...it's just a nice-ish Sony surround amp.
I'm confused by so few people wanting good audio for their games? I suppose it's the "ear bud" generation not knowing the difference...
I just want to get back to feeling the video game explosions. :(
Who Cares What Some Useless Toy Consumes? (Score:2)
No one cares. That's who.
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Yep no one cares. And that's why global warming won't be solved. We don't give a shit about wasteful issues which can trivially solve, so how are we supposed to address anything else.
Can't Wait.. (Score:1)
I can't wait for the next breathless Fox News report about how Microsoft is about to go broke.
The Steam Deck does it beautifully (Score:2)
And not only for developers, any user can enable it with a pair of taps on the right button menu. Great tool.
This isn't about measuring consumption at the wall (Score:2)