How does wattage work? Is it per hour? Per Day? Per minute?

AP:
It is not too complicated once you understand the basics.

Watts is the units of Electrical Power Demand.
When discussing motors or large electrical devices, we may talk about kW or kiloWatts, which is a unit of "1,000 Watts". 1 kW = 1000 Watts.

In the specific context that you are asking about, Wattage would be defined as follows:
It is basically the "Instantaneous Demand" at a specific point in time of an electronic device. In this case -- an XBox.

So Wattage is the average power the XBox uses in the last 5, 10 or 15 seconds that you have played it --- maybe averaging 110 Watts in that short period.

When you turn on a 100 Watt light bulb --- the light bulb pulls 100 Watts in electrical power demand at that second to turn the electrical power into Light.

If you now understand "Wattage" --- now we need to understand "Energy".
Energy is the "Rate at which we use Power".
If you are playing XBox and it has a Wattage Demand of 100 Watts --- and you play the XBox for 1 hour -- the the energy that you uses is: 100 Watt-Hours
If you played the XBox for 10 hours --- you would have used 1000 Watt-Hours.
The 1000 Watt-hours is called --- 1 kiloWatt-Hour --- or 1 kWh

With an Electric Rate --- from the utility --- PG&E, SCE, PEPCO, etc. --- of $0.15 per kWh --- it would cost about 15 cents for the energy to operate your XBox for 10 hours.

In this specific case --- with the X-Box -- you have several modes as follows:

System Off: Still pulls some minimal Wattage that is drawn by some of the internal XBox components. This shows from 0.6 to 2.8 Watts. Even though the system is "off", there still are some LED's or components drawing some minimal power to power memory, etc. A typical NiteLite uses about 3 Watts.

Idle: This is when the XBox is "on" but you are not actively using it. It pulls about 80% of full active power. Similar to when your car is at a STOP light, yet the car engine is idling. Your XBox might pull about 70 or 100 Watts in "Idle" mode.

System ON: This is when you are actively playing the unit and the unit consumes Full Power. This might be about 90 to 120 Watts on your XBox.

Hope this helps.

power is measured in watts, and is NOT per hour or day or minute.

Power (measured in watts) is a rate, the rate of using (or generating) energy, and 1 watt is 1 joule of energy per second.

Another unit of energy (not power) is the kW-hour, used by electric companies.
1 kW-hour = 3 600 000 Joules = 3.6 MJ

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Here's a simple answer: Power companies charge you per kWh. your light bulb is 60w which is equal to (0.06kW) let's say you are being charged $10.00 per kWh, then your equation would look like this: Cost/hr = (price per kWh) x (kW) Cost/hr = ($10.00) x (0.06) Cost/hr = $0.60/hr

Watt is an unit for power (electrical, mechanical, etc.).

Power is rate of energy flow. For example, a 100W light bulb consumes more power than a 75W light bulb. And a 100W light bulb will generate more light than a 75W light bulb.

Utilities companies usually charge customers for energy consumption in units of kWh, which is 1000Wh. In other words, it is energy consumption of 1000W for an hour, or 100W for 10 hours.

Therefore, when an electronic device is not in use, the lower the standby power, the less energy is consumed. For extended period of non-use, it would be better to unplug the device to cut off the power.