PlayStation joins U.N., gaming alliance to promote energy efficiency

Sept. 23 (UPI) -- Sony's PlayStation announced on Monday a new partnership with the U.N. Environment committee to help combat climate change and plans to make its next video game console more energy efficient.

PlayStation plans to be among video game industry leaders attending the U.N. Climate Summit Monday in New York to form the new Playing for the Planet alliance.

Playing for the Planet will promote to gamers the importance of combating climate change and how they can take an active role in reducing their carbon footprint.

Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan said on the company's official blog that PlayStation's next generation console, often referred to as PlayStation 5, will include an optional setting to bring down the amount of power used when the gaming machine is in rest mode.

The setting, Ryan said, will use much lower power consumption than the PlayStation 4 does when the console is on rest mode. The new console Ryan estimates can be put into rest mode by using only half a watt of power.

"If just 1 million users enable this feature, it would save equivalent to the average electricity use of 1,000 U.S. homes," he said.

The PlayStation 4 uses as much as 8.5 watts when in rest mode, 137 watts when playing games and 89 watts when video streaming, Polygon reported, citing a 2014 study from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

PlayStation also committed to completing a carbon footprint assessment on its gaming services, informing consumers on energy-efficient console use, helping developers include sustainability themes in their games and launching PlayStation VR applications about climate change.

The company will live-stream across YouTube, Twitch, Twitter and Facebook on Tuesday a new episode of State of Play at 4 p.m. ET to showcase new video games coming to PlayStation 4, including The Last of Us Part II.