In September last year, Microsoft committed itself to the production of 825,000 climate-neutral Xbox-Xbox consoles as part of the United Nations' "Playing for the Planet" initiative. An admirable goal and a good first step for the company's gaming arm A new, more powerful console on the horizon.
Microsoft has been particularly active in the area of climate change and has published extensive sustainability reports detailing its commitment to reducing CO2 emissions. As part of the Xbox console commitment, carbon offsets and renewable energy certificates would be used to save about 616,000 tons of carbon dioxide. A huge amount, which equates to roughly 130,000 cars on the road for a year.
On Monday, a user started a thread on the ResetEra forums referring to a Microsoft Story Lab project about the company's sustainability initiatives. The thread, which gained momentum on Monday, suggested that Xbox had made 825,000 carbon-neutral Series X consoles. This is not the case and goes back to Microsoft's Story Lab project.
The project includes a slide with an image of the Xbox Series X next to the claim, "Xbox created the world's first carbon-neutral game console - 825,000 of them actually."
But the statement and the image with which it is presented are misleading.
Xbox Has 825,000 "carbon neutral" Xbox consoles created, but this has nothing to do with the Xbox X series. A Microsoft spokesman told CNET that the pilot program was "carried out with Xbox One X consoles".
So why promote this initiative with Series X? Was it just a marketing faux pas? Was it on purpose? We can't say that. I asked Microsoft for an explanation but received no response. After CNET and other concerns, Microsoft has now removed the Xbox Series X from the image on its website.
Screencap from CNET
But why is that even important? We are currently in the dark about the carbon emissions produced by the Xbox Series X. Microsoft publishes "eco-profiles" for its consumer devices, including the Xbox, and provides a number of estimated emissions from manufacturing, energy use, recycling, and more. A Microsoft spokesman told CNET in March that the eco-profile assessment for the X Series had not been conducted because the system's final hardware and software were "still in development." We do not have any information about the X Series footprint.
And that's a problem. It becomes impossible for the climate-conscious consumer to see how consoles contribute (or not) to the climate crisis. As a company, Microsoft has committed to some ambitious climate goals - like reversing their total carbon emissions by 2050 - but on the gaming side of the coin it was particularly quiet. With only two months to releaseIt would be good to know how the next generation measures without all the smoke and mirrors.
