help! xbox, wii or mini nes for 7yo DS?

[happyscrappy]

All you lovely people that know about gaming, please may I have some advice?

DS would like 'something to play games on' for Xmas. He is very obsessed by Pokemon (but has an old gameboy with pokemon on already) and mostly plays minecraft with friends on my ipad. I'd prefer not to get him a tablet so he can have something to do multiplayer on.

What do you think the best console is? DH thinks the Xbox is too old for him and only wants him to play 'naice' games like old school super mario on the mini nes. Given I'd get an Xbox 360 or wii off eBay anyway, do you think it's a bit of a waste of money as you can't add games to the nes?

I'm so confused with all the choice! Any advice much appreciated

"mostly plays minecraft with friends"... what console does his friends have?

they are still all using PCs or minecraft pocket edition so I can't really choose that same as them (which would have made life easier!)

Are their parents/guardian's buying them consoles for Christmas?

My ds has a wii and I think it's brilliant. Plenty of games and not too expensive, games you have to stand up and move around to play and the console is cheap on eBay. Definitely worth it.

MTW I don't think any of them are getting consoles for Christmas, most of them are not as obsessed with screens and games as DS are are still asking for lego and stuff, which is why I'm a bit reluctant to get DS one, although it's the only thing he's asked for!
Poldark thanks! that's a good point re the wii!

DD loves her wii (the old version not the wii u). She has super Mario and a pokepark pokemon game amongst others. The good thing is you can get games really cheap second hand.

My DS was 7 last Christmas and we bought him a PS3. Totally adequate for him and its still going strong. Loves Minecraft and fifa.

Ds wants the Lego Dimensions game which can be played on the Xbox 360 - if I'm buying a 2nd hand one what should I look for?
Also what other games are good for a 8yo who loves Minecraft but hates realistic peril - was thinking of Lego Star Wars but some sort of racing or quiz game would be great, esp if 5yo could join in?

Be careful with the older Wii's secondhand. They develop a fault where they can't read the disk. Amazon has Wii and Wii mini bundles for not much more than the mini NES. The new Nintendo Switch is coming out in March so there might be good Wii U Black Friday deals too.

Id say wait until he's 9-10-ish for first Xbox.

Not sure what to get, we had an old style wii, when ds was 6-9 years old, I'm sure that's probably be replaced by newer consoles now.