Do people really spend £300 on their kids console

[Arren12]

Hi

My dd who is 8 has been asking for a console for ages and ages now. We have never owned anything like that. She's autistic and has never played with toys so we are limited to what we can get her for Xmas. I thought I'd look at getting a console of some sort but I'm gobsmacked at the price.

Most of her friends at school have had them for ages so obviously people must spend this but its seems so excessive.

We are by no means rich but we are not struggling for money. We are quite comfortable. Its just I feel its such a lot and think about what else that money could go on.

As I say my dd does not play in the traditional sense and spends all her time doing arts and crafts. We have every art and craft thing you can imagine so can't get her any more of that really. This seemed ideal but its way more than I'd normally like to spend on each child.

What do others do? Is it that people do spend £300 on Xmas gifts or is it purely seen as a one off big purchase.

The games are also so expensive.

Do most children have a console.

I feel a bit like I'm a bad mum because dd seems one of the only children in her class not to game. This was evident in a recent homework assignment.

Aibu to be shocked that parents are spending this and wondering how most afford it or feel comfortable with it.

I would also mention in addition to me disagreeing with the idea that gaming is educational, it’s set up to be addictive. Niece has a Nintendo ds and I was shocked at the purely manipulative techniques the games use to encourage playing everyday for longer and longer times. In ‘animal crossing’ for example, the game so many on here insist is fab for young kids and teaches reading and maths - if you don’t play for a few days or a week the villagers will all ask ‘where did you go we missed you etc.’ In the Nintendo dog game if you miss a day it will tell you your dog is ‘filthy’ and ‘famished.’

Of course as adults we know this is just silly and can ignore it, but why is it necessary for a game aimed at kids?

totally agree with kanaloa, it also embeds gambling style thrills with surprise boxes so you have to keep playing to get the thing you want.

My ds was given a handme down console, so we apend very little on games etc as it’s pretty outdated, but he still plays with friends on it and enjoys it. We try and talk to him about the surprise box aspect of it. We let him play a lot during lockdown, and he has got really good at the problem solving aspects of the games. It dominated his play for a while, but he has gone through that stage and come out the other side and plays a few times a week now. Which is a great point to have got to before the teenage years hit. I think introducing gaming to a teen is too late. You want to nail down the discipline before they are 10.

I think most children have access to even if not their own personal Consoles these days. We have multiple in our house.

@turnthebiglightoff

I think disadvantaged socially is a terrible, terrible thing to say.

And neatly plays into the hands of the companies making them

@toconclude
But possibly true.
If all the 10 year old boys are playing fortnite together and then discussing/playing it in the playground, the children who aren't allowed are going to be excluded.

My friend who is very anti devices bought her son an xbox in lockdown.
She was becoming concerned about him being isolated from friends.

@trumpisagit - during the first lockdown consoles were so so hard to get.

We have a PS4 that was used occasionally by DH but sons pals were all Xbox. I'd been trying to hang off to the new generations came out but caved in during the first lockdown. In fact at one point my pal and I were playing PS4 together. I was fed up of What's App conversations with nothing to talk about.

[quote trumpisagit]@toconclude
But possibly true.
If all the 10 year old boys are playing fortnite together and then discussing/playing it in the playground, the children who aren't allowed are going to be excluded.

My friend who is very anti devices bought her son an xbox in lockdown.
She was becoming concerned about him being isolated from friends.
[/quote]
I’ll happily exclude my 10 year olds from playing Fortnite. It’s not a children’s game. It hasn’t impeded their social abilities whatsoever.

Fortnite is rated a 12, its hardly an adults game, by mid teens they'd be too old for it

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions of it. I just don’t think it’s true to say children will be socially excluded if they don’t play Fortnite. In my experience it’s simply untrue.

Even when among us was popular, my son wasn’t into it. A group of kids were and talked about it all the time. He just went around with other kids who wanted to do/talk about other things.

This is just a fact of life. You don’t have to do something because other people are doing it. And kids generally are into lots of different things.

@Kanaola do you have a 10 year old boy?
I am not a particular proponent of gaming, or guns but it certainly captured my children at that age, not so interested now they are older.

Kanaloa

And yet I found those games perfect for my daughter when she was younger because even though you correctly pointed out the games have insentives to play every day, they also run in real time. This means it's not fun to sit and play for hours at a time and those games are best played in short bursts of 30 minutes or so. Nintendo has purposefully made them start to get boring after a short burst of play.

So for young children with small daily screen time allowances, those games are in fact perfect for that purpose.

Just to point out my post was in relation to animal crossing and the Nintendo dogs game. Not fortnite!

We spent more than that on our PS5. We’ve got an Xbox, a WiiU and a Switch. They all get used lots. Lots of games are less than a trip to the cinema. The cost of the console is the same as we’d pay as a family for 3 or 4 trips to the cinema and a trip to McDonald’s. Year round entertainment plus play dates are sorted.

We have an xbox, gaming PC and a switch ds1 has been allowed to play on them since the age of 3/4. He's picked it up very fast and enjoys either playing something with his dad or we all play together. For Xmas he's getting a few games for the switch. It's probably the easiest for him to use.

@trumpisagit

Yep, as mentioned upthread my oldest two are 11 & 10, boy and a girl. Neither is a social outcast through their lack of PlayStation/Nintendo games. They get on well with others as normal, lots of friends come to play, neither of them is standing at the side of the playground mournfully watching their friends talking about Fortnite. Absolutely no issue really.

@Popcornriver

Kanaloa

And yet I found those games perfect for my daughter when she was younger because even though you correctly pointed out the games have insentives to play every day, they also run in real time. This means it's not fun to sit and play for hours at a time and those games are best played in short bursts of 30 minutes or so. Nintendo has purposefully made them start to get boring after a short burst of play.

So for young children with small daily screen time allowances, those games are in fact perfect for that purpose.

Not really true for the games I mentioned - not sure about others. In animal crossing you can catch fish and sell them etc repeatedly, and you’re encouraged to do so to get the prizes of higher houses/money to buy new pretend clothes. My niece can play for hours and hours if allowed to and doesn’t find it sets itself half hour limits. I must disagree that Nintendo have tried to make them boring after 30 minutes.

Random question for gamers - why do so many people say they have a PS4 and a PS5? Does the newer one not render the older one useless? Is it not the same as someone saying I have an iPhone 11 and an iPhone 12? is one an upgrade of the other or do they actually do different things?

No real importance to the question. Just curious.

I'm far from a hard core gamer but I'm not sure if the PS5 will play all PS4 games so they may have games they still play on PS4. Again not sure if PS5 players can chat to PS4. So a compatibility thing.
Or the PS4 gas been down graded as the kids machine.

The Xbox one and series are compatible at the moment with each other but give it time and more series games won't be compatible with Xbox one.

I'm 31 and I had a SNES in the mid 90s, then an N64 a few years later. When my brother came along, he got an Xbox when he was pretty young. I've always had some sort of console on the go (PS2, Nintendo DS, etc) and DH is a lifelong gamer, too. Currently he has the newest Xbox and I'm happy with my Switch Lite.

From my perspective, it's surprising to hear of a child that age without a console but I understand how it would be overlooked if their parents weren't gamers. When DH's last Xbox crapped out he immediately went and bought a new one that same day because, in addition to gaming on it, we use it as our media centre (YouTube app, iPlayer, Netflix app, etc).

I bought my ds a handheld nintendo when he was small. I held out against an xbox or playstation and was glad I had when covid came and he needed a fast pc for school work.

In the end we compromised and I bought a tower PC with a decent video card so it could be used for games as well as school work and now making videos for YouTube as well.

Yes they are expensive but a once-every-4-years purchase.

I guess it depends on the people you know and in the kids class. There's only one boy in my son's class (he's yr 3) who does gaming and none of the rest of the group I know. I asked my son about this but he was indifferent and seemed confused when I spoke of the various gaming products. He wasn't really interested and we are fairly old parents and don't play on gaming consoles so it's not like he will stumble across gaming. Lots of the other parents happen to be a bit older too. I'm not worried about it.

Ha ha just read the full thread and yes I was indeed knitting earlier!

we are fairly old parents and don't play on gaming consoles so it's not like he will stumble across gaming. Lots of the other parents happen to be a bit older too.

Don't assume older parents don't game. Gaming isn't exactly new, first generation machines date from the early 1970s.

My kids are both getting a switch lite each £199 each , and 3 games

It's a lot of money I think but we can afford it and it's what they want and if they use it a lot I guess it's worth it

I was always quite anti-gaming when mine were small as I didn’t want them being sat in front of a screen all day. But actually, while both of mine love games they would still prefer to be doing something outside. And consoles are expensive but they are used a lot over a long period of time so they do work out reasonable value in the long run.