In a post on the official Playstation blog, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan announced the "Playing for the Planet" alliance. The initiative consists of 21 large video game companies  taking action to reduce their environmental footprint and generally contribute to environmental awareness among gamers. These contributions will hew closely to environmental guidelines set by the United Nations Environment Programme.

Ryan points toward a number of steps undertaken by Sony in the production of Playstation consoles that have already reduced their environmental impact. The PS4, he explains, utilizes a resource-efficient "system-on-a-chip" architecture, die shrinking, and power scaling, all of which are technologies that ultimately have had the effect of reducing Sony's carbon footprint. He cites the amount of carbon emissions avoided would the company have not used these technologies to be 16 million metric tons in total.

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Additionally, the PS5 is confirmed to include the ability to suspend games at a lower wattage than current PS4 consoles, which is estimated to ultimately take 0.5 watts. Ryan explains that should one million users take advantage of this feature, it will save the same amount of electricity that is used on average to power 1,000 homes in the US. For scale, in January of last year, the number of PS4 units sold had already surpassed 90 million.

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Finally, Ryan has claimed that Sony is looking into collaborating with climate change experts on applications for PS VR designed to raise awareness of climate change and other climate-related issues through interactive experiences. He explains that the ultimate goal of the Playing for the Planet alliance is to maximize the possibility for the video game industry to have an impact on climate sustainability.

Playing for the Planet also includes Microsoft, Google Stadia and Ubisoft, among other notable video game development companies. Sections on the official website currently listed as "coming soon" also seem designated to provide resources for gamers and parents of gamers, likely with information on what they can do to ensure that gaming habits have as minimal of an impact on the environment as possible as well.

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