With Christmas coming up, I thought I’d point out a personal experience we’ve had with video gaming and our children. VIdeo games are a hot Christmas item, and it seems around my neighborhood that everyone has a video gaming system of one sort or another. The problem is, it is expensive!
The Nintendo Wii is one of the most popular gaming systems on the market today. It costs around $550 for the console and $50 for each game. A bit cheaper is the Playstation 3, at about $450 for the console and $60 per game. Cheaper still is the XBox 360 at $200 for the console and $60 per game. I don’t know about you, but all of these options are still rather pricy!
I still have an old Nintendo 64 that I hooked up to the TV. It still works like a charm. The graphics are dated, the games are ancient, and do you know what? My son’s friends come over constantly to play. All of them have their own gaming consoles (yes, the expensive ones listed above) and quite a few games, yet they come to my house to play a gaming system that was made in 1996!
I’ll point out that my son and his friends are around 8 years old and this certainly won’t fly with your teenager, but if you have younger children you will be amazed how effective this actually is. Nearly every evening that I come home from work, my house has children from the neighborhood playing one game or another on this old gaming console. It’s almost comical when I think of how much money that their parents spent on the newer systems and knowing their kids are at my house playing video games on my old system. Younger kids are interested by anything that’s different than they have. My system is certainly different!
How much cheaper are we talking? Well, a quick look at EBay shows systems as cheap as $12. A mall nearby here in Cincinnati has old Nintendo 64 consoles for about $20. There are tons of used games available (at the mall they’re anywhere from $2 to $6). I could easily buy around 15-20 good Nintendo 64 games for the price of 1 of the XBox 360 or Playstation 3 games.
This just goes to show you that you don’t always need the latest and greatest to impress your friends. A Nintendo 64 with 5 games is around $40. A Nintendo Wii with 5 games is around $800. $760 is definatley enough to consider alternative options such as these if you are looking to save some money this Christmas!
Written by Matt on October 5, 2008
Thanks for visiting my blog and leaving a comment. I still have the original Nintendo and GameBoy and they are a blast to play with. As soon as my son is old enough (he is only 2), I plan on introducing him these. We might upgrade to a better system when he is older, but this will work for several years.