Morning all, I’m trying to come up with a suitable family present for this year. Two boys, aged 7 and 4 so surprise surprise, electronics is the must have so I am told…..

I’m thinking on a PS4, however I’m the first to admit I know pretty much zilch about gaming consoles and for that matter games that are suitable for their ages.

So question to the masses, if it were a games console, which one and which games to purchase? Again remembering the games need to be suitable for a 7 and 4 year old. I’m not really keen on the whole online gaming, I’d still like to remain 100 percent in control of their online activities which is presently limited to YouTube. I do appreciate it won’t be long before this change.

PS4 is my choice but you need to see what most of their friends have.

Games:

Lego ones

Minecraft

Pretty much what Drac said.

Arguably the PS4 is very nominally the better console, but for most practical purposes there’s nothing in it. If they (or you) have friends with consoles then buying in to the same system is worthwhile so you can lend each other games and (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it) play online. For this reason, I’ll be getting an Xbox One.

Is it actually a ‘family’ console though, or just for the kids? If the latter, a Wii U might be a more anklebiter-friendly purchase. It’s hands down the worst of the three but probably the most child-friendly. Or, consider last-gen even, The 360 / PS3 / Wii are still decent machines, will cost a fraction of their big brothers to buy, and considerably less in care and feeding. For the price of a PS4 / One you could get a PS3 / 360 and enough games to keep them happy till the heat death of the universe.

As for playing online, bear in mind that most multiplayer games give you the option of playing in public games or restricting to just friends. Avoiding public games will dodge most of the horror stories you may have heard, factual or otherwise. Playing online with little Timmy at number 27 is no more risky than them playing together offline.

Don’t forget to budget for a second controller.

Minecraft plays perfectly well on an Xbox360, if you don’t want to spend so much.

I bought an Xbox One a couple of months back. Primarily for my 6 year old lad, but for the odd bit of gaming myself.

I’d not recommend it, mainly because there isn’t much in the way of games available for that age group if you pay any attention to age certification. The situation has eased slightly now that there is some backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 games, but not much.

If I was to do it again, I’d get a Wii U. As it is, he spends more time playing games on a hand-me-down iPad.

+1 what ben said.

I bought an Xbox One for my 9 year old – he was desperate to move on from the wii. A couple of his friends had the xbox one, so we went that route over the PS4.

There is no denying it is a great machine, just not aimed at the younger market. Getting (suitable) games for it is not easy.

One feature that has not been carried over from the 360, is the parental control. On the old box (my Brother-in-law bought one for his Son) it is possible to limit the amount of time they can play on it. That feature has been removed from the Xbox One.

http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/parental-controls

Yes Cougar, there are some controls – age appropriate stuff and the like (and very good they are too), but…. the ability to impose time restrictions has been removed.

On the old box (my Brother-in-law bought one for his Son) it is possible to limit the amount of time they can play on it. That feature has been removed from the Xbox One

If you know how to add this, I will be a vary happy parent 🙂

Hide the controller.

PS4 is currently the VHS of the console markets by market share but agreed if his friends are Xboners then go with that.
Avoid the Wii – you may as well get them a tablet or a cheap laptop for running Minecraft
PS4 Parental Controls

Hide the controller.

This is currently our #1 tactic

freddyg – Member

One feature that has not been carried over from the 360, is the parental control. On the old box (my Brother-in-law bought one for his Son) it is possible to limit the amount of time they can play on it. That feature has been removed from the Xbox One.

It was relatively easy for kids to work around that.

It was relatively easy for kids to work around that.

Possibly, but something is better than nothing.

Parental control? Just switch it off. It does work.

If you know how to add this, I will be a vary happy parent

Timer switch on the mains. If they work round it at least they’ll have learnt some basic diagnostics.

Bought a 360 last Christmas for about £150 including two controllers and Minecraft (the main driver). The bonus is that everything is cheaper and most of the games that would be better on XBox One aren’t really suitable for the under 10s in my book.

Kinect and a telescope this year I think.

Just switch it off. It does work.

Not when your 9 year old gets out of bed at 5, and sneaks downstairs to play on it. He’s then wrecked come the end of school.

“No” works for a while, as does removing privileges and hiding the controllers. But an easy way to avoid confrontation is to set a time limit. We have one set up on the android tablets and PC and this works fine.

I don’t mind administering a bollocking, but it becomes tedious and causes unnecessary upset for both of us. Re-implementing the 360 time limiting system would solve it.

EDIT:

Timer switch on the mains

Been there, done that.

Go into your router admin and set the times of day each device has access to the Internet.

Then hide your administrator password and router IP address 😀

Turn the sockets off at the distribution board before you go to bed.

I’ve got a PS4 and a WiiU. I bought the PS4 first so the kids could play together. Only to find out there’s nack all games that allow local multiplayer this generation. Hence went out and bought the WiiU so we could all play together.

Or just tell the kid no? With all respect isn’t that what being a parent is about sometimes?

nack all games that allow local multiplayer this generation

Disney Infinity, all the Lego titles…

The controllers go into our safe every night and they only come out once homework and anything else is complete (and if they have behaved during the day!).