A Progress Update on Our Carbon Reduction Goals at Xbox

Here at Microsoft, we’ve set ambitious commitments to meaningfully reduce our environmental impact and become a carbon negative, water positive and zero waste company by 2030. This morning, in an Xbox Wire post, Director of Sustainability for Xbox Trista Patterson shared an update on the progress we’ve made towards those commitments.

“Xbox plays an important role in achieving this, and today we are proud to share that, in just three years (FY20-FY23), Xbox has contributed to this goal with interventions to reduce energy from console usage,” writes Patterson. “These interventions, which include greening game code and players opting into energy saver modes, have prevented over 1.2 million metric tons of CO2e, compared to usage without interventions.”

In addition to our players opting to use the Shutdown (energy saving) power option, active hours and carbon aware updates on Xbox consoles, our collaboration with game developers leveraging the Xbox Sustainability Toolkit made these preventions achievable. These measures highlight some of the improvements we’ve made to reduce our carbon footprint, and we are continually exploring new ways to innovate, learn, and improve our sustainability efforts at Xbox.

Making Game Code More Energy Efficient with the Xbox Sustainability Toolkit

Xbox is the first major gaming console to create energy and emissions measurement tools and make research insights and case studies on reducing energy and emissions publicly available via the Xbox Sustainability Toolkit. These tools, which include power consumption dashboards, case studies and telemetry data, have enabled developers to gain insight into how much energy their games are using and identify opportunities to reduce energy usage in ways that are imperceptible to gamers. These techniques can also be used to prolong battery life in battery powered gaming devices.

“In just three years (FY20-FY23), we’ve seen implementation of the Xbox Sustainability Toolkit from studios like 343 Industries for Halo Infinite, Activision for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and Call of Duty: Warzone, and others. Thanks to the collective effort and support of our developers, these latest emissions prevention measures were made possible,” writes Patterson. “We eagerly look forward to seeing the positive impact of the Xbox Sustainability Toolkit continue to grow, as new tools are introduced such as Dynamic Power States API, the latest platform technology made available in June that allows developers to deliver increased energy savings without compromising graphical fidelity.”

We’re constantly looking for ways to empower developers to leverage tools and resources that help reduce energy and emissions in game development. Developers interested in accessing these tools can visit the Xbox Development Kit (GDK), with additional resources available on the Xbox Game Dev Docs website. Developers can also contact their Microsoft point of contact or participate in conversations on the Xbox Developer Forums to learn how to get started. 

For more information on the progress the team has made toward our carbon reduction goals, read the full Xbox Wire post. To learn more about our efforts to improve our environmental impact, visit xbox.com/sustainability.