Xbox for 7 year old

[Blondie1993]

My DS (6, 7 in December) has asked for an XBOX for Christmas. He has been asking for a little while but I thought he would have changed his mind by now.

AIBU to think he is slightly too young?

He doesn’t use much tech at the moment. He uses my tablet to play minecraft or Sumdog. He generally plays minecraft for half an hour at the weekend and 20 minutes or so in the evening when it’s school holidays. He plays minecraft for half an hour once a week as part of his homework. There’s never an argument when time is up or anything and he doesn’t pester for it.

I’ve just always thought an XBOX was quite a grown up thing, I didn’t expect to him to ask for one quite yet!

[Woffulu]

We have over 30 consoles and thousands of games. It's not an overload.

I would say that is 🤔

[ProfessorMoody]

Well you're not a member of my household, so how would you know?

I've been gaming for over 30 years, as has DH. We have every console we've ever played and now DS is a gamer too.

It's not an overload, as like I've already said, only one can be played at once.

How many bags and pairs of shoes do you have? Clothes? I have one bag, one pair of shoes and a pair of wellies. Five tops and two pairs of jeans. Anything more and to me, that's an overload.

[Mybackhurts1]

Get him one - switch has the best range of games for that age but the Xbox is absolutely fine and you’ll still find age appropriate games for him. The Lego games are brilliant. The Xbox One X is better than the Xbox One S - graphics and memory. Both my son’s have played on the Xbox since age 3 and our family are big gamers!

[Cleanermaidcook]

Ds got an xbox when he was 7.
He plays mine craft, lego dimensions and star wars. He loves it. We also play real lego, play out, read and do sports. It doesn't replace life it's one of many activities.
He also loves music and has Spotify on it.

[gamerchick]

and VR headset

Can I ask how decent this is? I'm really fancying the VR. I have all consoles so platform isn't a problem?

It definitely isn't an overload, only people who see gaming as demonic and are a bit ignorant (In a nice way) won't understand. You can only play one at a time after all.

[gamerchick]

How many bags and pairs of shoes do you have? Clothes? I have one bag, one pair of shoes and a pair of wellies. Five tops and two pairs of jeans. Anything more and to me, that's an overload

Heh, I'm more or less the same

[OHolyNightOwl]

We have the PSVR, so not the fanciest, but oh man it is amazing. It is incredibly immersive and there are some cracking games for it. Astrobot is FUN!

[icepop9000]

We also a gaming family. Got all the major ones and christ knows how many in the loft!!
You can't compare a switch to an xbox it like chalk and cheese due to graphics, games etc
You can't play all the lego games on a switch. The game selection is quite low too.
Also Zelda is a PEGI 12-excellent game but maybe not for a 7 year old game play wise, lots of tough puzzles!
If you lay down rules I don't see a problem.

[Blondie1993]

Sorry, I should have mentioned that his dad and I have been separated for many years now! He spends 4 nights per week with me and 3 nights with his dad. The Nintendo Switch is being bought for his birthday by his dad to play at his house. He has asked for a scooter from me for his birthday .

Thanks for all the replies. I would keep the console in the living room and probably hold off on online play/friends until I see how he gets on with it. I'm not concerned about him playing too much or losing interest in other things. He wouldnt play during the week as we are too busy, it would just be an hour at the weekend really.

I quite like the fact it's a dvd player and I could watch Netflix/iPlayer too . I guess I just expected this to be a teen present but it looks like I am living in the dark ages a little!

[Sowhatifidosnore]

That age? Wii Switch. Save the time on arguing about what cert games they can play and it’s a good one for family games

[ProfessorMoody]

There's no such thing as a Wii Switch

If you mean either the Wii U, or the Nintendo Switch, there are 18 rated games on both, so your comment makes absolutely no sense.

[sonithewoni]

I'm so grateful I have a 7 year old who isn't even that arsed for his 4 year old Fire tablet and shows very little interest in TV and games. Although his favourite pastime is standing in train stations collecting numbers so I guess he has his own issues :-)

[ProfessorMoody]

Why are you grateful? Is it somehow superior to have a child that isn't interested in technology?

I'm grateful mine shares our love of games and TV.

[SpoonBlender]

The Nintendo first party games for the Switch are extraordinarily well tuned for kids - they have game design that's easy to start and carefully ramped and pretty much anyone can finish most games if they have a modicum of ability, but allows more capable players to do oh so much more. The post-500 moons in Mario Odyssey is a different world to the under-250 moons that lets you "complete" the story. Captain Toad, Mario Kart, Splatoon, Arms, as well as Odyssey and Zelda are gorgeously balanced. No-one else is doing anything like the Labo sets. There are Kirby, Animal Crossing, Pokemon, Yoshi all due out in the next year. And most of the normal favourites are either on Switch or rapidly being ported - there's over 1200 games for the thing now, it's selling at four times the speed the XboxOne ever did and games houses are paying very close attention.

Few XboxOne-exclusive games are likely to be of interest to a 7yo, while Switch-exclusives are far more likely to be. Apart from a couple of phone games, Nintendo don't make games for anything else.

GamerChick The PSVR is remarkably good. I've got an Oculus Rift too, and the Rift is better but the PSVR does so much for so little, it amazes me - and in some ways the visuals are better (no screen-door effect, tighter focus and no 'god rays' from using normal lenses instead of fresnel). I'd wholeheartedly recommend it. And then buy Rez and Astrobot to get you going. You an pick up a second hand one easily, plus there's no doubt be black friday (eccch american cultural hegemony) sales soon. You don't need to pick up Move controllers btw, almost nothing uses them.

[maplebaconbun]

My DS (6) plays on PS4, usually Minecraft. I think it's fine as long as you manage the screen time well.

[SpoonBlender]

XboxOne exclusive games are either shoot-mans games or car racing. Not great stuff for a 7yo when compared with Splatoon and Mario Kart!

[ProfessorMoody]

My DS uses the Xbox for Portal, Unravelled, the two Adventure Time games, Boggle, Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Rocket League, Minecraft, the Forzas, Lego Worlds, the other Lego games (Harry Potter etc), Rock Band, Just Dance and more that I cent remember off the top of my head. Only one of those is a driving game and none of them are shooting games, so you're pretty far off the mark there.

[Etino]

@ProfessorMoody
That is a lot of consuls and games. TBH I’d struggle to justify any extreme unless everything else was pretty exceptional. So a child reading a novel a day would raise alarm bells unless they also played outside, had friends etc.
Unless your dc is doing
exceptionally well at school, has good friends, time for extracurricular activities, low BMI and plays
grade billion and orchestra over several instruments, no anxiety or sleep problems, I’d suggest 30 consuls is taking
up space and energy that could be directed better elsewhere.
To be fair you’ve not said how long your son plays on them and you might come back and say 10 mins before Mandarin classes and cleaning out his pony

[ProfessorMoody]

Well seeing as most of them belong to me and my DH, and he plays for an hour a day, I still don't believe it's overload 🤷🏼‍♂️ We collect consoles, it's our main hobby and it's something we enjoy.

But actually yes, DS is More Able and Talented at a few subjects, has no issues, is incredibly talented at the instrument he plays and does a particular sport as an extra curricular activity as well as music and drama, so I'm more than happy.

[Kokeshi123]

He spends 4 nights per week with me and 3 nights with his dad. The Nintendo Switch is being bought for his birthday by his dad to play at his house.

I think you need to factor in the question of how good his dad is likely to be about setting and sticking to limits. How much gaming time is he going to get overall?

[Etino]

@ProfessorMoody 👍
As I was ranting I could think of several families, with an ‘outlier thing’, eg that they are many or watch loads of tv or are incredibly active in church or their local community. I guess it’s part of a family’s culture, and that glue and common purpose is positive, even if the benefits of the glue activity aren’t obvious.

[SpoonBlender]

ProfessorMoody "XboxOne exclusive" is what I said. So that's Arizona Sunshine, the Halos, Forza and Forza Horizon, Gears of War, Titanfall... and sod all else. Shoot-mans and cars.

There's the Rare Retro pack, some of those would probably go down well to be fair.

I do know what I'm banging on about, I've been playing these things and collecting since the early 80s. I've got an Xbone, a PS4, a Switch, WiiU/Wii/GC/SNES/NES and a SNES dev box, 3DS/DS/GBA/GBC/micro, PS3/PS2/PS/PSP/Vita/TV, Dreamcast/Saturn/Megadrive/Master System/Nomad, Wonderswan and Color, Vectrex, Amiga1200/500/C64/VIC20, Atari STe/800XL, Speccy/QL/ZX81, BBC B/Electron... plus a few bits of specific emulation hardware in order to make life easuer with modern tellies. Plus the VR kits of course.

And I do contend that Nintendo makes the best games for kids - that are also superb games for adults. Even something as twee as (for instance) Kirby's Epic Yarn is a fantastic game with so many levels of difficulty that anyone of any level of experience can get loads out of it. So my recommendation is very much "get a Switch, skip the Xbox".

[ProfessorMoody]

I agree that Nintendo makes some of the best games for kids, but there are plenty on the Xbox too. OP wants both consoles, as the Switch will be at a different house.

[SpoonBlender]

And I'd recommend a PS4 over an Xbox, too. Far better exclusives than the Xbox, though again not as much for kids as the Switch.

[SpoonBlender]

But mostly I'd recommend porting the Switch back and forth.