AIBU to ask MIL not to buy an XBox for DS

[nomoredora]

Sorry for another MIL thread..........

MIL has told DH that she will get DS an XBox for Christmas. DS is 2. Would I be unreasonable to point out that this is a massive waste of money and he would probably much prefer a toy?

Don't want to dripfeed so will point out that MIL always goes completely over the top at Christmas (and hardly bothers with DS the rest of the year) and is the type to go in a mood, make us feel like ungrateful buggers if we say anything.

I just think he is FAR too young for an XBox!!

Get your DH to very gently suggest it's not such a good idea, and if she's stubborn, he can just nod and smile and as you say put it on eBay later. She'll be none the wiser (presumably she's not going to want to come round and play it?!).

I've gone away and thought about this and now I think you should probably crack down on age inappropriate presents now, because I suspect that the person who buys a two-year-old an XBox 360 may be one of the people who will go on to buy a 9 year old random fashionable computer games or console games (like Call of Duty, Manhunt, Grand Theft Auto) because "games are for children", totally ignoring the age rating.

I'm speaking here as a computer-game-aficionado, who finds the widespread dismissal of age-ratings intensely disturbing. Sure, there's room for responsibly considering a game for your individual child, and exercising personal judgment, just as there is when you're renting a DVD or buying your child books, but that does necessitate the purchaser actually looking at the game.

Ha Ha Ha, seriously , is she mad ?

How her friends will laugh when she mentions this to them !

It would be like giving a toddler a china tea service and expecting them to play with it, totally unsuitable and with a life expectancy of less than a week or so. By the time your ds is able to play on it technology will have moved on so far you'll be relying on vintage second hand games for it from ebay.

Perhaps your dh could go shopping with her and talk her through the options so that you end up with a more age appropriate bit of gaming technology.

Oh dear. Please forgive me. What is an X-box? My grandson would like a voucher for an I tune and I don't know what that is!

I am computer literate (for work anyway).

Basically, an Xbox was 1995's answer to the Playstation/N64/Sega Megadrive of yore.

We're now on the Xbox360 (popularly abbreviated to Xbox). They're all made by Microsoft, and the Xbox 360 will be obsolete within 10 years. Perhaps less.

AnotherEmptyNest, you can buy i tunes vouchers in places like WHSmith. They are like gift cards, so people can download music off the internet for their i pods instead of buying CDs.