Would you get him it?

[YourHandInMyHand]

DS wants a wii U for xmas. He wanted one last year but I thought they were too expensive. A lot of families I know have bought them as a joint present for their dcs but DS is an only child.

It's more than I would usually spend TBH but he has autism and doesn't "play" with toys really in the way most kids do apart from lego which he has tonnes of.

What would you do? Buy it or not? He's 9 but very young for his age and still believes in FC.

I probably would.
I always held off these expensive consoles as long as I could. Not for any other reason than they were still quite young and there were loads of other things I could think of to buy instead. Ds1 is 8 and really wanted an Xbox. He also explained he understood that it was a huge thing in terms of value so he wouldn't be getting his usual pile of presents.
That was when he got one. He was old enough to understand the cost of things rather than thinking a pole of presents was worth more.

could you get it as a family present?

we have just a Wii but we can play it all together

I'm not sure about the Wii u as that's new to me?

I second the 'family' present idea, (I have no idea about autism..) we always got family presents so we realised that it wasn't ours it was everyone's basically stopped the 'but it's mine and I want to play xyz' argument
If he wanted one last year and still wants one in a few months I'd say it's probably not a gimmick either, I'm fairly sure my present idea from fc changed every 3 days when I was that age!!

Does he know games he specifically wants to play on it? We bought one and the games available are mostly rubbish.

We use it for MarioKart 8 and that's about it...

If you can afford it, then yes I would. You could buy a reconditioned one from a games shop which would be cheaper. My mum did that last year for my adult younger brother. He has broken several games consoles so my mum refused to pay full price. The one he had last year is still going strong. My brother is also on the spectrum. He is an adult, but very difficult to buy for. The games console means that new games are always an option for birthdays etc

I'm a single parent to an only child so family presents aren't really a thing here. Especially as I have no interest whatsoever in consoles and DS knows this!

DS's main autism obsession is all things Mario. There are a couple of games he plays on the demo one in the game shop. One was a mariokart one, I think the other was a luigi one.

I would probably buy a used one as places like Game they come with a warranty anyway and would be cheaper.

Still not sure but there is so little he plays with that it's a serious option.

Him breaking it isn't a concern - he is very careful with his things.

If I could afford it then absolutely