Gaming Kills Pandas

So over at the Wal-Mart gaming blog—

Wait, Wal-Mart has a gaming blog?

…Well! Whaddaya know?

Wal-Mart held a “Green Gaming Summit,” bringing in reps from Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, EA and other big fish to talk about making game packaging more environmentally friendly.

I don’t know if I’m set to believe every word out of a company that’s having so much trouble making its stores employee friendly, but the numbers in the blog are sobering, nonetheless.

From the Wal-Mart blog:

There were about 101 Million games sold in plastic cases last year. That translates into green house gas emissions equal to over 9,000 cars!

Some of the next generation consoles can be used to play DVD or Blu-Ray media. Doing this uses more energy, a LOT more, than a stand alone DVD or Blu-Ray player.

If we left one of a sample of our next generation consoles on 24/7/365, we consume as much energy as TWO refrigerators in that same timeframe!

If half of us did this, consoles alone would consume as much energy as it takes to power a city like San Diego.

…

Switching to cardboard packaging would be like taking almost 4,000 cars off the road in terms of equivalent green house gas emissions.

Working with console manufacturers on coding and power usage design can reduce the power consumption when we use our devices for media playback.

Developing software and hardware that allows us to save the game so we do not have to leave it on would allow us to turn it off during a meal break or overnight without loosing our place. Additionally, come clever programming would allow the console to go into a lower power, standby mode when not in use.

Focusing on the next generation of consoles would allow the machines to be built from the ground up to use less power while providing an even better experience.

Oh God, I’m going on a guilt trip courtesy of Wal-Mart. God, why hath you flipped the rules of the world you created?

(Stock photo from David’s Anger)