New Xbox 360 Cases

Those who recently purchased some of this holiday's biggest titles for Xbox 360, such as Left 4 Dead 2 and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, probably noticed something a little different about their game cases. The circular-style holes behind game discs and instruction manuals are not production errors. It's a new effort by companies to become more environmentally friendly by reducing excess packaging materials.

Hong Kong-based case manufacturer Viva Group recently rolled style the new style of casing dubbed the 'Eco-Box' which significantly reduces CO2 production emissions. The Eco-Box is already being used by movie studios for DVDs, but now it has begun appearing in the videogames industry.

Viva passed along some statistical data to show the reduction in CO2 emissions this new packaging provides:

• 2005/2006 Xbox 360 box: 0.249 lbs of CO2e
• 2007-current Xbox 360 box: 0.203 lbs of CO2e
• 2009 Xbox 360 ECO-box: 0.172 lbs of CO2e
• Difference: 0.077 less CO2e per box 2005-2009; 0.031 lbs of CO2e savings per box 2007-2009

That is a 31% reduction in CO2e since product introduction in 2005 and 15.27% reduction in CO2e since 2007.