PS5 to use far less energy — but only if people tell it to, Sony says

Announcement made as part of PlayStation's work with the UN on climate change

A detailed view of a PS4 controller as players practice during day one of the 2019 ePremier League Finals at Gfinity Arena on March 28, 2019 in London (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

The new PlayStation will be able to use far less power than the existing console, Sony has said.

The feature will allow the PS5 to suspend games and switch into the standby mode more efficiently, the company has announced. But it will only do so when the feature is enabled, which it appears users have to choose to do manually.

It is just one of the very limited number of details that Sony has revealed about the new console, which still remains almost entirely mysterious. It will include a new kind of storage that will allow it to load much more quickly than the PS4, Sony has said, but the possible release date and price are yet to be announced.

Now Sony has revealed the new power-saving feature as part of an initiative with the UN to focus on the environment. A number of gaming companies will be part of the "Playing for the Planet alliance", which aims to make the industry more sustainable.

One of the features revealed as part of that announcement is the more efficient standby mode.

"I am also very pleased to announce the next generation PlayStation console will include the possibility to suspend gameplay with much lower power consumption than PS4 (which we estimate can be achieved at around 0.5 W)," said Jim Ryan, president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, which is responsible for the PlayStation.

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

The PlayStation and Xbox both use significant power when they are turned off and in their standby mode. A report in 2014 said 40 per cent of the energy use of the most popular consoles actually happened when players were not on them.

Staying in a resting state allows the consoles to power up more quickly, as well as to download updates and other content at any time. But it also means that parts of the consoles must be consistently drawing power, using up energy despite nobody actually using the console.