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Which Xbox should I buy?


welnik

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Hi.

 

Son's 9th birthday coming up and he is after an Xbox. There seems to be a wide range of choices and I'm not sure what to go for. I wont be buying any of the shoot em ups or violent games and he doesn't like football games but he will want to play Minecraft.

 

Which one should I go for? We already have a PS3 and Wii and I dont want to spend a fortune on the console.

 

Anyone know of any good offers at the moment?

 

Cheers

Nick

 

ps What games would you recommend for a 9 year old?

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At this point I'm not sure it is worth recommending anything other than the cheapest one you can find. The Xbox 360 is almost as old as your son and is almost certainly absolutely going to be replaced by a new Xbox this year.  You are going to buy a new console for a handful of games that you cant get on PS3, and and when you reduce that list of games to ones suitable for a nine year old then it is quite a small list.    Minecraft on Xbox is a watered down version of the PC game, if you can get the game running on PC (and it will run on the cheapest of laptops) then you might want to do that instead. 

 

The only other child friendly exclusive game I can think of off the top of my head is Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. 

 

http://youtu.be/HHHXv_2eBwM

 

Maybe Viva Pinata too.  Both are quite old and might be out of print though. 

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Ha, says a lot about Rare doing games for kids instead of the good games they used to make.

 

Incidentally, I tested both Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise (the sequel) and Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts :P

 

I know it's for your kid, but I wouldn't bother. As Rev said, there's a 99.9% chance Microsoft will bring out a new Xbox console this year. If you already have a PS3 and a Wii, and he's not going to play FPS's, I'd stick with the PS3.

 

That being said, if he has his heart set on one and you're definitely going to buy him one, go into Game or Gamestation and ask for their help. They'll have bundle offers on there and they might have some games for kids.

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Yeah but a new console could cost a fortune and I can't see the 360 being made redundant anytime soon.

I dunno whether it would be worth looking at a DS? They seem to have more games for children than the consoles.

Also kudos to you making sure he only plays age appropriate games. I think more parents should do this

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At this point I'm not sure it is worth recommending anything other than the cheapest one you can find. The Xbox 360 is almost as old as your son and is almost certainly absolutely going to be replaced by a new Xbox this year.  You are going to buy a new console for a handful of games that you cant get on PS3, and and when you reduce that list of games to ones suitable for a nine year old then it is quite a small list.    Minecraft on Xbox is a watered down version of the PC game, if you can get the game running on PC (and it will run on the cheapest of laptops) then you might want to do that instead. 

Just to pick you up on this bit, Minecraft won't run on the cheapest of laptops, at least not well.

 

It's surprisingly demanding on graphics and you need to turn all the settings right down to get it to run on a low end laptop (I know this from experience, believe me) and even then it'll be slow.

 

At the very least, it's worth checking that it will run competently on your PC/laptop before making a decision.

 

Again from experience, the XBox version can be a much more satisfying experience purely because you can run it smoothly with far rendering distances.

Edited by Stevo985
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