British Gas Blasted for Advising Customers to Turn Off Consoles Like PS5, PS4

Ah yes it’s all our own fault. Absolutely nothing to do with the profits they’ve been siphoning off. Isn’t private business in the public interest such a wonderful thing?

Far be it for me to suggest that the term "Carbon footprint" was created by the BP marketing team as a way to put the onus on the customer instead of doing something about it themselves.

I was gonna say I've got a smart meter and my PC uses almost nothing when sleeping, how about this mob stop crying about having to raise prices whilst posting record profits.

Isn't another benefit to rest mode that it takes more energy to turn on than wake from rest? So frequent users could actually use more energy by turning their console on and off instead of using rest mode.

I had to move back in with my Mum for the time being this year and its really annoying having to explain to her that my TV and consoles aren't taking up massive amounts of energy and costing her a great deal more.

@WallyWest why not just give your mum an extra bit of money each month? Helps pays the bills and it’s a nice gesture

I have exactly zero trust in governments, energy companies, big tech and of course, the media. They've proven untrustworthy over the last few years.

Old Man Yells at Cloud

I turn my PS5 off, but leave it plugged in. Does that consume anything at all? Tiny little bit right?

Apart from using unrealistic figures, why don’t they...er, I don’t know...let us use our own common sense. It’s obvious that something in standby mode will use a little power, as opposed to being completely turned off. We pay the bills, so we can decide for ourselves what to leave on standby.

I'd rather throw my consoles at these disgusting 1%er turds' faces thank you very much

@Shepherd_Tallon Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of "good" companies out there. But when the ones that are both directly and indirectly responsible for some of the worst climate change issues out there is resistant to change, it's a kick in the teeth to those who actually try their hardest to make changes. Unfortunately they also have us by the curlies, so it's not as if we can do anything about it anyway.

It seems like you’re comparing numbers from two groups that are invested in opposite outcomes. It would be interesting to see a neutral party’s take. Sounds like a job for Tim Harford and the good folks at More or Less.

That's £12 well spent on keeping myself entertained.

Its funny we have a prepay meter and over the last bank holiday the power went out and we had 24 hours without power when we got it back up i started turning my Xbox Series X off at night and are power use was reduced big time

Me and my family are confussed about that it cannot just be the xbox lol

I guess they didn't mention the Xbox because they are always off anyway I do worry about wasting electricity really & once I tried to look at those meters that tell you how much energy you use & I had to switch it off because it was depressing

Pedantry alert ..

"Watts per hour" is incorrect. It's just "Watts". Watts per hour is like saying 'Miles per hour hour'. A watt is 1 joule per second. It is a rate of consumption, not cumulative.

You CAN say watthours, but it's almost always converted into Kilowatt Hours

So, a console consuming 0.5 Watts will consume 0.5wH per hour . Or 0.0005 kWh per hour.

The memes write themselves at this point, this is too funny. So sad nearly 2 entire continents have to suffer over the west’s desire for global hegemony. Rip

£12.17 per year so just over a pound and a penny a month.....better off turning of The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) if that's all they can come up with.... A TV Licence costs £159 per year....The BBC are the “vampires”.

@Philbop I do i give her a very healthy amount each month.

Corporations lying, well I am surprised, this is likely a mixture of lies and incompetence, trying to justify the price hike.

The British Gas research was carried out in 2019 and updated to use today's prices. I think it is safe to assume they weren't testing a PS5 as it didn't exit then! Nor does the article mention PlayStation or any other brand. I would also guess that the PS5 has not yet reached the point where it represents the standard games console in UK houses.

@Number09 British Gas isn't the BBC

@Barryburton97 you are right Barry.

just 1 small question It was the BBC that told us to switch of our consoles I believe we should shut of the BBC.
Barry what part of that has any thing to do with British Gas?..

I do not use hate often but I tend to steer away from British Gas because "I hate British Gas"

I've got a switched 4 way surge protector with the PS4, PS3 and TV in it and I always turn it off at night. No point it being on if no-one's using it?

Only thing I leave plugged in is the Freesat box and the cordless telephone base station/answerphone thing.

@BeerIsAwesome this is true, same way the plastic industry makes it all the public's fault for littering and not recycling (you can only recycle plastic twice anyway).

@Number09 The article talks about British Gas, merely passed on by the BBC, I'd take umbrage with BG first.

@Number09 It’s not really the BBC telling you that though. They’re reporting on what was said by British Gas, same as this article.

I love how every time there's a push to save energy or reduce your carbon footprint or whatever, the onus is put on us to pick up the slack from all these giant corporations that guzzle down and hemorrhage resources, producing waste like no other. And it's never really to "save the planet" is it? It's to save them a few bob on top of their billions in profit 🙄

@Gloamin agreed, but it's worse than that. They make money from waste. It's just posturing to distract from the real problem (i.e. them).

Lordy, I haven't lived in the UK for six years, haven't been a British Gas customer for over fifteen but I'll never forget what an awful company they are. Privatization seemed to turn them from a handy public utility into the mafia. I remember once having the misfortune to answer the phone work to the most vampiric salesman ever who said he was going to switch us to them and tell my boss I did it

@Uncharted2007 Amen.

@Barryburton97 Hahahahaha take umbrage with BG first...i#'m talking about the beeb telling you to switch of your console whats that got to do with British Gas?
Did British gas tell you to turn off your console?

@nessisonett are you telling me its not the beeb that are telling you to switch off your console.because that is what i wrote about...I mean you come across as a clever dude...but maybe sometimes you get involved when no one really cares of your opinion....on this one you got it wrong.....Did British gas tell you to turn off your console?

@Number09 I mean, even the headline says British Gas. Just admit you read it wrong and stop digging.

@Barryburton97 instead of this escalating into stupidity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYOZ3IzRaf4

Because the BBC was a figment of my imagination.

@Barryburton97 indeed they do! Gotta keep up that eternal and unsustainable economic growth somehow!

I’m surprised at everyone here is claiming it’s fine I can afford the money, well the fact is consoles and other devices on standby use power and cost money. Do least not to help the planet a little can you not fully power them off? I mean SONY gives you that option in the menu even!

@Number09 hehe, a bit of Father Jack will resolve almost any situation.

I always fully turn off my consoles. No matter what I do. Only time I put them to rest mode is when I'm downloading something overnight. And overnight is the only time I am downloading games.

Power cuts are rare very rare in my area, but it does happen and I rather play safe than having my console to be formatted every time it is incorrectly switched off due to power cut.

@Fyz306903 Yeah exactly. We already use metal straws (took a while to get use to but it feels great now), use reusable bags for shopping, and cut down our red meat intake, I'll be damned if I have to suffer through reduced heating and entertainment for nothing as well.

@Fyz306903 All those plastics end up in the ocean though and then in the food chain. People have micro plastics in their blood these days due to that. You can blame big energy companies all you like, sure they are scum, but we all have a responsibility to change things.

British gas must know the correct figures. So they're lying on purpose to make it look like the rising costs are our fault. They're saying 'its not greedy corporations raising the prices, it's YOUR fault for not turning appliances off'

I have a stupid question, how is the solar market in the uk? What with the weather, and all.

@Number09 Yes, British Gas are telling you to turn off your console. That’s the article. That’s literally the article.

I’ve an aunt who’s neurotic about house fires , and that’s before potential data loss or even wall switches are even taken into account. She’d be running around pulling out plugs

It's ok my wife can just have blankets and a hotwater bottle whilst I play my PS5 in the dark.

That pesky math, just take the numbers we pulled out of our rears damn it!

"Vampire electronics" How Fu**ing dare you British Gas! How about you stop making record profits. Disgusting company.

Boy, they're going to have a really fun time with all those electric cars.

@Toypop agreed. The real enemy here is unregulated capitalism and a wealthy and entitled elite, but I feel like a gaming website makes a poor venue for political and socio-economic discourse.

It makes me laugh because they are moaning about consoles costing quite a bit even in standby mode right,now i know aomebody that's got an electric car and has to charge it up every single day so surely that's bad for the enviroment,
And the energy prices are so high because it's the chancellors fault for pocketing the money,another thing i went into poundland and it was a hot sunny day yeah?so why the f××k did they need the heating on?it's people like us that have to pay for it but nobody seems to say anything about companies that waste energy and make the public pay for it.

@Toypop I was talking about this with my partner the other day. We both work in the hospital and her department has asked them all to send less emails, because it actually costs more electricity-wise.

In short I complained about how we built a digital society, and are afraid of using electricity. While all these companies are building an always online metaverse to replace our real lives, they tell us we can't use as much electricity. It's absurd.

So you have companies building an all digital future, and refused to get off fossil fuels for decades, because it's what makes them money, but no, it's our fault for using them.

@Number09 The story is that British Gas and other energy firms have been advising their customers to switch off their consoles. The fact that they have been doing so has been reported by the BBC in their capacity as a news service. The article mentions the BBC because that is who Pushsquare have picked up this news from.

From the piece: '...energy firms like British Gas have been releasing “advice” to help soften the squeeze on consumers. One such suggestion, as reported by the BBC, is to turn off your game consoles.'

So, you see, the BBC, not being an energy firm, is not telling anyone to do anything. They are merely reporting on the fact that energy firms are telling their customers to do something.

Sorry to labour the point, but it seems necessary considering your posts in this thread.

@metak you are a wonderfull person Thank you....The fact you joined up just to tell me that is Formidable.

44% increase in profits WTf and they still continue to bang the prices up...

It's almost as if corporations are full of sh1t 😲 who knew!

Yes that WAS sarcasm.

@Toypop I figure there's two possibilities, each 50/50 as likely as the other. Possibility 1 is they're lying through their teeth, the human caused climate thing is nothing but a scam based on an unprovable hypothesis to generate money and reassert a feudal hierarchy where the unwashed masses are kept in their place below the privileged with their activities monitored and restricted.

Possibility 2 is they're telling the truth, in which case we're all already dead and absolutely nothing can change that, because their "plan" to fix it is about as useful as collecting tin foil and rubberband balls "for the war" in the 40's while they try to curb vacuum cleaners and plastic straws while encouraging as much jet fuel consumption as possible, and replacing cars with electric cars, then widening the roads to accommodate more of them than ever so we need to build more power plants more distribution, more parking lots, more heavy metal batteries from China where we can't see the byproduct, more plastics, more everything that's bad. If they were really serious they'd have shut down every last airline and ended the very concept of tourism and business travel years ago outside necessity. Unnecessary consumption to the calorie. The "eat your cake and have it too" mentality as a "solution" is something only a politician could come up with. What politician would be re-elected on a platform that says we either need to roll back the industrial revolution, or cut earth's population by at least half rapidly? So instead we get consumption theater.

I'm not sure which possibility I like least. On one hand there's the possibility they've convinced the working and lower classes to destroy themselves in a hysteria of saving the earth, and the middle class to spend twice as much on everything simply to control them and profit from them. On the other hand there's a real crisis and the leadership, worldwide, is so overwhelmingly incompetent and ineffective their only strategy to fix it is to move the shells around and hope nobody figures it out while they clean out the silverware and head for the bunkers (and Mars) while they leave everyone for dead. A return to feudalism on one hand due to the schemes of the elite, and the fiery death of all life on Earth on the other hand due to the elite's dramatic incompetence and useless preening.

I kinda hope they're lying through their teeth and it's all a fraud to abuse us, because if they're telling the truth, we're screwed beyond screwed and they have no plan and missed any window for a plan. Which...the last recent crisis tells us...that's their usual M.O. If they're lying, eventually the pitchforks will end it.

And this is what leads us to playing depressing post-apocalyptic video games on vampire consoles and a desire to never turn them off.....

rest mode lol its on my series x , but not on ps5 last time i did that on ps5 i had to factory reset!
lol turn off everything 🤣 im sorry but most tech needs left on today either on or a low powered state like rest mode. how about lowering the price and not rip us off lol as if they would do that 🤦😂

...But man caused climate change 🤦🏻‍♂️... (While China & India pollution is off the charts, celebrities tell us to conserve while they take private jets). If anyone cared about it, believed the world would be ruined for their offspring, they would stop using all electronics & vehicles 😂

@Mad001 i turn everything off, and it all works fine. I don't leave anything running all the time except my phone & television. All of my consoles are set not to update automatically, no games or system automatic updates, & set to turn completely off. I only have a ps4 to be fair, but have a switch & series S also (Along w 3ds, Vita, PC, & wii that i barely use). They all work great. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I've found a better solution than complaining about big company on a gaming forum, i've leaved this ..ing island that is great britain to live and work in a better country. It was not hard at all, i've worked hard in school, have good diploma and now i can work in every country i want. And i'm not anymore a sheep customer of those company. I've learned to create battery storage and home made solar panel (thank's ali express). I paid less and still have electricity. They're plenty of solution, but people prefer to complain on internet instead... I don't know what is the worst here, those company that making too much profit or customer who complain on their stupidity instead of moving and taking life in their hand. You are far too dependant !

@AndyKazama Could not agree more let me have my fun and come with real money savers. You want to help people start isolating the old homes of people who rent that will make real difference.

@NEStalgia Here in the Netherlands we live beneath the sea literally so i dont want to find out that i was wrong and flood my country. If we go on with this rate it will get to expensive to keep the water out of the country.

A better environment, more clean air conserving te earth is not a bad thing to works towards.

Here in the Netherlands you have people that die because of air pollution just like in the UK and other countries. So being more environmental isnt a bad thing in any way.

@YorkshireNed Dont worry its the same in the Netherlands. Privatization is a nonsense argument the US is a fantastic example of that if you only look at the internet.

@Flaming_Kaiser I don't think your worries about it conflict with my summary though. It's not necessarily an "anti" position, but a legitimate 50/50 position. They may be lying and you've nothing to worry about. Or there may be a problem, and if so, the "solutions" they keep selling, simply aren't, and you need to grow gills fast. . Hope they're lying. If they're not, none of the climate theater they pose as a solution comes close to doing anything while everything except transfering money to ever smaller percentages and everything else proposed will continue making it worse.

There's a grim reality to it that if it's real, if it's really a crisis, the only viable solutions are too gruesome to contemplate (well, outside one particular national leadership, anyway......... ) and everything else is feel-good showmanship (for a profit, of course.). Bleak... But that's where it is. So.... Hope, very hard, it's a scam. If it's not, we're hosed.

Otoh, I don't disagree at all on environmentalism. It just become dangerous when environmentalism, which failed, piggy backed into climate to use the fear of disaster to push the unpopular environmental agenda. Two different things coupled and it becomes a facade, especially dangerous if the disaster is real. Environmental claims should stand on their own, sink or swim without being manipulative about it.

But I'm from a world where when you buy something you expect to keep it until you die. Took me a long time to realize that's not how it works anymore and everything is made to break. I'm still angry about it. Yet every time they try to fix these things they just make it worse for normal people and stylishly luxurious for the well off. The solution was to never let it happen to begin with...... Sigh

@NEStalgia Im still annoyed that my PS3 has a battery to keep my licenses alive even with the dreamcast it was easy to access.

My brother has had a kid and love to see him have a nice life without a destroyed earth. Animals get extinct out at a horrible fast rate. Plastic is already found in people blood because of the polution. Here in the Netherlands they have kill of so many Chickens because of the birdflu every year.

I read that some clothes are useless after washing them 2 or three times we just need to safe up things like a andriod Phone that doesnt get a update after 2/3 years after release while the phone is perfectly fine.

Here in the Netherlands people tell people to just move if they dont like Schiphol a big airfield not look at other solutions. I do believe we need to be more protective with our people and environment.

If you the US forestfires and problems with water should be something to think about. In Europe with gas a Russia we never looked further to do something about it now they tell us to put out heat lower and take shorter showers.

While we social living (cheaper rentals) for the lower incomes with terrible isolation that could save so much heating and solar power for out houses its a pity that profit is more important then having people lead a good life.

@Deadlyblack So many clouds, so little time.

I'll yell at the kids on the grass

@BeerIsAwesome another false fact to go with the one from British Gas.

@Gloamin
Now the government is going to tax their profits, they're taking a hissy fit and threatening to not spend on greener alternative energy production.

So they're refusing to improve their own companies, and don't care about the environment as long as they make lots of metal and paper

@__jamiie
Yep, if they were having to raise prices because they themselves were struggling, you'd sort of understand the reason why.

But they're raising prices and still making massive profits, so their company is not under threat, is it? Pure greed and profiteering, using the pandemic and war in Russia as an excuse to justify raising energy prices, whilst millions suffer from poverty.

All whilst they're smoking cigars, living in mansions, driving nice cars and having big fat bank accounts at our expense.