Microsoft has announced that it will give Xbox One owners a new way to use the "energy-saving" mode in response to criticism over the amount of energy the console consumes.
Such criticism came from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which pointed out in a post on the tech giant's official blog on March 26 how the Xbox One's "instant-on" mode constantly used up power, according to Tech Times. The group said taxpayers would be able to save as much as $250 million annually by simply turning this feature off, and recommended that Microsoft make it easy for users to turn it off when they set up their new consoles.
The new energy-saving mode will be available in a new power option screen and serve as an alternate to the instant-on mode. While Xbox One owners have always been able to choose between these two modes, the new option screen makes the energy-saving mode more available to owners.
This isn't the first time that the console received heat from the NRDC, as the organization criticized the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in 2014 for using two to three times as much power as their predecessors, Polygon reported.
Microsoft said in a blog post this week that the new mode has helped reduce the amount of power consumed with the instant-on option by one-third since the launch of the Xbox One.
The only edge that the instant-on mode has over the energy-saving mode is that it provides users with faster startup times, and that updates are downloaded and installed without interruption, Tech Times reported.
However, another benefit of the energy-saving mode, according to Microsoft, is that console owners will only have to spend between 26 and 62 cents over a year with the new option, as opposed to $6.50 to $15.50 over a year with the instant-on mode.
Microsoft said in the post that the energy-saving mode will be available to Xbox One owners in the U.S. "in the coming months."
