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Have you ever wondered how much power your game consoles are sucking up? The next generation consoles like the Xbox 360 have remote control activation and standby-charging, which means there’s going to be some power draw even when you’ve shut down the machine. DX Gaming tested all the consoles in the last two generations, and as we suspected, the Xbox 360 topped the charts for energy use.

Take a look to see the stats

When in standby mode, The 360 leaks 17.52kWh per year, resulting in $2.63 worth of energy loss at $0.15 a kWh. What’s surprising is that the PS2 leaks just about the same amount of juice, even though it doesn’t need to keep its wireless port active for turning on the console via the wireless controller.

When actually gaming, the Xbox 360 will run you $20.10 a year—including the leaked energy costs—when you estimate 2 hours of gaming per day. The Xbox comes in second with $8.17, and then the Playstation 2 with $5.91 (with almost half of that being leaked in standby). The console that costs the least to run? The Playstation 1, with just $0.92 in both leaked and actual played energy cost. Wow. Who would have thought you would be able to power your PS1 for less than a dollar a year?

Chris Leckness (3547 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

Chris Leckness is the Owner/Administrator of Mobilitysite. He is a Microsoft MVP, Mobile Devices and a member of the exclusive focus group, Mobius. Chris runs a Mobilitysite, GotZune, and a few other smaller sites and blogs. His personal blog is chris.leckness.com.