Last Wednesday, the 22nd, Microsoft presented the new Sustainability Toolkit for Xbox Developers during the GDC (Game Developers Conference). The kit will allow game developers for Microsoft consoles to optimize the power consumption of titles to reduce the carbon footprint generated by the Xbox.
This is not the first attitude to reduce Xbox power consumption, as Microsoft consoles already received an update in February with new power options, but let’s talk now about the new Developer Toolkit.
With the Sustainability Toolkit for Developers, game creators will be able to compare the power consumption of their games with other Xbox titles so that games are optimized to consume as little power as possible without impacting the user experience.
According to Microsoft, this measure is essential, as most of the carbon footprint is generated by running games on consoles. At the conference it was mentioned that “sustainability goals can be completely imperceptible to the player”, which means that the performance of games should not be impacted after optimization.
One example of optimization comes from 343 Industries, which lowered a game’s power usage by 15% by shrinking an image that was rendering at 4K but was not visible to the player in a pause menu, when secondary content of the screen is blurred.
“The kit includes analytical and visual systems, measurement tools and resources to help creators make informed decisions about the energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with their game projects. The toolkit helps developers take advantage of the Precision-engineered feedback to help identify and reduce power consumption in scenarios where a player doesn’t need it, thus ensuring the player’s experience is not negatively impacted.
The kit can be paired with the Xbox Series X DevKit for reference purposes with console power usage monitoring tools. Creators will also be supported by the Xbox Sustainability and Certification team, who will provide power consumption averages for games on the platform.
All of these metrics will be made available in the Xbox Game Developer Docs. The new kit was designed in collaboration with 343 Industries and Ubisoft, the latter already working on an “Ecological Mode aimed at the player”.
