Our technology deprived 10yo son wants a gaming system. I know nothing about these, so any advice & tips welcome (which system, games, size etc).

Ta

What system do most of his friends have?

Which system does he want?

Which system does all his mates have?

PS4 is mentioned a lot.

Bought laddo a pre owned xbox 360 s couple of years ago from game. You got a better warranty than buying a new one.

PS4 it is then.

CEX and Game do deals on secondhand ones but you can sometimes find deals for new ones for not much more. Hot UK deals is good for finding deals or you could just buy one from Gumtree or the likes.

Ok, i’m swayin! Whats the advantage of extra memory on these?

Extra Hard Drive space you mean? Games take up a fair bit of space especially if you download the digitial version.

Yup. A typical (downloaded) Xbox 360 game might be four or five gig. On the One / PS4 it can be ten times that, and even with a disc-based game there may well be a large chunk of it copied to the hard disk.

A lot of the modern games will install onto your harddrive from the disc, this chews up memory.

And digital downloads are increasing too which does the same thing.

Not sure how many times you can D/L a game you have paid for – PS3 was 3 times before you had to buy it again. Remember that PS4 has an annual subscription now too.

Also, be engaged with your son whilst playing the games – there’s a lot of bullying that goes on in online versions which he may or may not be able to deal with.

I’d also consider not buying 18+ rated games even though his mates might have it. Although the chances are if the mates have it he’ll have seen the gore etc.

I’d also consider not buying 18+ rated games even though his mates might have it.

+1 Yep certainly until in his proper teens.
Go for a 1TB disk if you can – they aren’t hard to replace & PS4 has instructions on how to do it.

Personally, I’ve refused, point blank – with menaces, to ever allow any sort of gaming headset. Firstly, it effects his ‘selective deafness’ terribly, but mostly I’ve never heard more horrible language, views or opinions as I have on online gaming. Honestly YouTube comments are nothing compared to the sexist, racist, xenophobic, violent and downright horrible things people say – impotent rage I guess, you can’t physically do anything to that other player who’s being a “so and so” aka playing better than you, so the verbal abuse goes straight to 11 on the scale.

This is why I only play with friends, or friends of friends. Online gaming doesn’t (usually) have to mean that you’re playing with the great unwashed.

Yep, I personally don’t like online gaming much, the world it seems is full of arseholes and most of them have a fibre connection these days.

Unfortunately my Son’s opinion of “friends” is looser than even the most hardened Facebook fan. When he was using my PS3 I went from 4-5 friend to over 150 in days, when I asked who they were they were “friends” of his, so I asked who they were and he couldn’t give their real names, where they lived etc so I deleted the lot of them – only after I read through some of the messages they exchanged – worrying to say the least, a few days later I was back up to 80odd friends – he was a little smarter this time – if you believe him there were 75 kids in ‘year 5’ called Jamie or Dee – our home version of the ban hammer hit it like the fist of a vengeful god and it all died down for a couple of years – in the end he had 20 or so friends, they were either kids from school, or the kids of my Wife’s or my friends and all was well with the world.

Then, came the gaming PC, it’s mine so it’s my fault really – minecraft PC is much better than MInecraft PS3, he begs for a gaming headset – hell no, the other day he asked for access to the Skype account, I asked why – to talk to his “friends” online because he’d been asked for it – there’s a limitation with personal contact on Minecraft without a headset – you can chat, but there’s a decent swear filter and it’s pretty mundane when I watch it. Oh hell no for Skype though. Thanks to a Child Account on the PC and lack of admin rights he can’t get into too much trouble and he needs access to my e-mail account to sign up to anything else.

I’m really naive about this stuff, do you HAVE to play these games online? Or can you just play by yourself or with others sat next to you?

Why an annual subscription? & how much?

I’m really naive about this stuff, do you HAVE to play these games online? Or can you just play by yourself or with others sat next to you?

Most games will have a single player, or multiplayer mode with a split screen, but on-line gaming is where it’s at really for consoles nowadays.

Why an annual subscription? & how much?

To play on-line, about £60pa I think

qwerty – Member

I’m really naive about this stuff, do you HAVE to play these games online? Or can you just play by yourself or with others sat next to you?

Not really… but most games now are very online focused to the point where some big recent games like Star Wars Battlefront’s off-line (for want of a better term) content is laughably small, it’s no more than a training mode for online, it’s the worst I’ve seen though.

When it’s good, it’s great – even the best games can’t recreate the skill and speed of real opponents, but when it’s bad it’s terrible – lots of games get simplified into a series of known moves and counter moves – it’s boring to play like that, but you’ll get slaughtered if you don’t – games like GTA V try to promote co-operative play rather than competition but even that doesn’t last long, they can’t it seems, however hard they try to stop people being arseholes, for the sake of being arseholes – to try to get a reaction – “rage quit” they call it, they’re constantly ruin someone game to the point they leave and go and play in a different group – there’s often no visual indication they’re angry – but they daydream about making some unknown faceless mope so angry they quit – and this gives them a chubby.

I used to love computer games, but it seems the better they’ve got, the less I like them – online anyway.

To play on-line, about £60pa I think

£40

Loads of games can be played single player.

Digital copies there is no limit on how many times you can download and they can be shared.