Very serious, very respected Aussie consumer magazine Choice ran a little test recently. They plugged a bunch of electronic stuff in, turned them on, then let them run and added up how much each appliance would cost you to power for a year if you left them powered-up. The humble DVD player would run to AUD$34.42. A cordless telephone? AUD$2.87. A PlayStation 3? AUD$260. Egads. The 360's not much better, coming in at AUD$203, while the humble Wii uses a humble AUD$24.58. Sure, nobody ever leaves a console on for 365 days, so these are indicative, but still. They're indicatively reminding you to turn your consoles off when you're not using them.
Power usage [Choice]