Xbox wants to know if you'd sacrifice performance for a cheaper electric bill

A new Xbox survey asks players if they'd like energy-efficient graphics options in games.

As Windows Central reports, a new survey on the Xbox Insider Hub includes a couple of questions about in-game graphics settings and features that could save you money when your energy company comes a-knocking. To be clear, this doesn't mean that any of this will actually be implemented; it's just Xbox conducting a temperature check for the community's feelings toward energy efficiency in games.

For example, the survey asks if players would appreciate the option to optimize settings like resolution, frame rate, and visual effects to save energy. Likewise, it asks how they'd feel about a feature that automatically lowers a game's frame rate or resolution when the player idles or goes inactive for a certain amount of time - also for the purpose of saving energy. The survey seems centered around consoles, but these hypotheticals could extend to PC games as well. 

More generally, the survey wants to know if Xbox players are "worried that turning on energy saving features may negatively impact my gameplay experience" and whether such features would impact their purchasing decisions. Naturally, at the end of the day, a mega corporation like Microsoft wants to make sure that whatever it does in the name of energy conservation and reducing its carbon footprint will also be profitable.

Back in 2021, we interviewed climate scientists about ways the Xbox Series X and its main competitor, PS5, could do better to limit their power consumption. The skinny version of it is: both consoles have unsustainable energy demands and could be a lot more energy efficient, so it's good to hear Microsoft is exploring some options.

In case you are looking for a less demanding new-gen console (for your wallet and your energy bill), the Xbox Series S is currently doing exactly what Microsoft wanted.