The problem

Energy-saving options buried in settings are rarely switched on. When a default is sensible, most people keep it.

The fix you can use today

• Ship low-power behaviour in menus and idle states as the default.
• Let users opt out rather than opt in.
• Measure what the default saves across your whole user base.

Microsoft's Xbox team found that most Call of Duty players kept the energy-saving default. GreenCode's research review draws on this work.

Tools that help

• Xbox Sustainability Toolkit (Microsoft): power monitoring for games in PIX, plus published case studies of energy-saving changes

How GreenCode helps

GreenCode helps tackle this by finding the code that drives processor, memory and network demand and rewriting it, so the same features run on the hardware people already own. More on this.

Tags

#games#ux#devices

Sources

• GreenCode State of the Art Review, D2.1 (2025), PDF p. 142: Call of Duty default Eco Mode: 7-20% of players opted to turn it off (Xbox Sustainability Toolkit case study)
• Microsoft, Gaming sustainability: Call of Duty case study
• Greening of Streaming, The LESS Accord (Mile High Video 2023): energy-optimised default with a per-programme 'Gold Button' upgrade
• Greening of Streaming, LESS Accord page

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