Those of you who prefer to purchase physical games may have another factor to consider moving forward: their impact on the planet.
A fascinating report by French carbon accounting firm Greenly, as published by GamesIndustry.biz, delves into the environmental cost of buying Blu-rays as opposed to digital downloads.
The study claims that the manufacture and transportation of retail releases can be up to “100 times more carbon intensive” than simply purchasing from the PS Store.
According to its research, pressing and shipping up to one million PS5 discs emits up to 312 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e).
By comparison, a 70GB download of one million games emits about three tCO2e.
Author Stefanie Safdie told GamesIndustry.biz:
“Ultimately, downloading a digital copy imposes emissions linked to electricity use at home, as well as the energy use of the concerned data centre – but it does not have the same impact as the emissions created by the industry in terms of landfill and excessive waste, which are primarily still accounted for by physical consoles and hard disk copies of games.”
The report adds that the extraction of rare Earth metals and plastics during the production of physical games also “requires high energy usage and can deplete already finite water resources”.
Cloud-based gaming, as you’d expect, also comes at a cost, as any reduction to the use of physical materials is offset by the power requirements of the servers hosting the content.
The study says that platform holders can help contribute to a greener future by shipping consoles with energy saving features, much like the one Sony recently added to the PS5 which can reduce power consumption by as much as 50%.
When it comes to physical games, the study also argues in favour of a more robust second-hand shopping environment, which encourages the recycling and reuse of existing physical products.
But how do you feel about all this? Have you ever considered the environmental impact of purchasing physical games compared to digital downloads? And has this study forced you to reconsider your purchasing habits moving forwards? Let us know below.
