Finally caving in and buying one for my daughters 14th Birthday. Wasn’t going to as decided they were evil and soul sucking and what’s wrong with the Wii, but then saw some of the driving games and thought ‘hey time for a bit of lax parenting’

I see the ‘new’ one is due out this year, but birthday is in May. However, I know nothing about games consoes after the original Atari, so advice on which one, extra bits needed, worth going for the movement thingy, etc much appreciated.

To be honest I wouldn’t bother with the kinnect, my kids like it who are 11 and 8 but play on it rarely, as usual it came along with all the fanfare/revolutionary technology bollox but no one has really gone to town on developing and genuinely good games for it. Only thing I’d get is a dock to charge the handsets as I can never find one of the three in our house that has decent batteries in it!

Al – I got one to use as a Windows Media Centre extender (It will serve media from your PC to the TV. You will need to get the Windows Media remote for it too – cheap ones on eBay)

Its a remarkable fluke of luck it also plays 360 games! 😯

I cant recommend enough getting your hands on Portal 2. My brother has my copy, but he’s lazy so if you want it I can sort you out with it.

I dont bother with the kinnect bollox, but I reckon girls and the whole dance game genre require it so you might need to get it, or save it for xmas present.

Do get a pair of cheap rechargeable batteries off ebay for the controllers. They charge via a USB cable to the xbox. Otherwise you munch through AAs.
These are the ones I got
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/360580753515

LA Noire I liked too.

Ta both. Shall do some googling then. Was considering the whole windows media PC thing as we seem to have a proliferation of pvrs, dvd, blue ray, freesat etc. I regularly have to harvest the sofa for the right controller. Still having only worked in technology for 20+ years, I’ve no bloomin idea at all where to start

Portal 2 looks fab. Last PC game I remember playing in my consultant-weeks-in-a-hotel phase was half life!

as a media extender it suits us well as we dont have a TV in the house as such. Just a 40″ old outdoor broadcast samsung monitor 😀

The PC has two tuners and records series etc that I tell it to.

either tuner can be streamed to the xbox for live tv such as cbeebies (for me. the kids prefer the History channel). Or we watch a prerecorded series.

DVD player in the Xbox. iPlayer on the Xbox as well. If you can bring yourself to pay £40 a year to Mr Gates you can also use Netflix, 4OD, Demand5 etc on the xbox as well. I dont as Im tight.

(PS, ” I’ve no bloomin idea at all where to start”- give me a shout and put beer in the fridge and I’ll pop round with a hammer and some electricity)

I *may* have a 360 for sale – no box, mind.

Standalone xbox connected to the internet works brill, but not in her bedroom.

And I can still beat all my kids on the driving games, everything else though…