Consolations
What do you lot think about console gaming platforms?
What I can gather quickly:
They cost roughly the same (£250-£300 depending on bundle). The PS4 and Xbox One are similar in terms of raw capability, some way ahead of the Wii U. The Wii U is the unloved clear loser of this generation of consoles, which seems a shame because the Wii was the beloved clear winner of the previous one.
I get the impression that most people who choose Xbox One vs PS4 do so based on their favourite games: Halo, Uncharted, etc. But I don't like first-person shooter/fighters so that's not much help. Otherwise, the PS4 outsells the xBox 2:1, so there'll be more second-hand stuff around and more of the kids' friends are likely to play. There was a load of user-hostile stuff around the XBone when it first came out, but they seem to have backtracked on most of that. A quick skim through the famous platform-exclusive titles looks like a bunch of stuff I'm not interested in, except for No Man's Sky, due out on PS4 in the Summer.
In terms of clearing under-TV clutter, the PS4 and Xbox One will do duty as Bluray/DVD players, but the Wii U won't.
Most of the games we might be interested in are available entirely cross-platform: Minecraft, Lego Dimensions, Kung Fu Panda, etc, although presumably the graphics won't be quite so whizzy. However, quite a lot of big-name games are PS4/Xbox One only, because the Wii U isn't up to it and/or is too small an audience to justify the development. That said, most of those games aren't the sort of games I like anyway, and are certainly not games I want to encourage small children to play.
On the plus side, a Wii U can play all of our existing Wii games, including transferring save-game states and progress, which the kids will like a lot and will mean they won't whine about ditching the old Wii. (There is no room for multiple consoles, physically or psychologically.) . There's also a load of platform-exclusives that would be up our street: Zelda, Scribblenauts, Splatoon, Mario Kart, Super Mario Maker, Star Fox Zero, and possibly other Nintendo family/multiplayer things I don't know about yet.
Another downside is the Wii U is a year older than the other two, and Nintendo have already pulled an Osborne effect on it by half-announcing the Wii NX, which they will probably announce properly before too long. So not only is it a commercial flop of a platform, it's on notice of obsolescence. I'm not going to blow that much money on a platform that might stop being a live one for developers in less than a year.
So I'm thinking that actually my favoured option is "make do with the Wii you have at the moment, plus the PC and iPad". Particularly since I don't want the kids to spend more time on screens than they do already. We are not short of things to play games on. And it is real money that I could save up for something else. Like a hundred Starbucksy coffees! Or, more likely, the car giving up the ghost or stopping the house falling down in some respect.
Edit: Argh, but Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens is coming out ...
This entry crossposted to http://doug.dreamwidth.org/315622.html, where there are
comment(s) not shown here.
What I can gather quickly:
They cost roughly the same (£250-£300 depending on bundle). The PS4 and Xbox One are similar in terms of raw capability, some way ahead of the Wii U. The Wii U is the unloved clear loser of this generation of consoles, which seems a shame because the Wii was the beloved clear winner of the previous one.
I get the impression that most people who choose Xbox One vs PS4 do so based on their favourite games: Halo, Uncharted, etc. But I don't like first-person shooter/fighters so that's not much help. Otherwise, the PS4 outsells the xBox 2:1, so there'll be more second-hand stuff around and more of the kids' friends are likely to play. There was a load of user-hostile stuff around the XBone when it first came out, but they seem to have backtracked on most of that. A quick skim through the famous platform-exclusive titles looks like a bunch of stuff I'm not interested in, except for No Man's Sky, due out on PS4 in the Summer.
In terms of clearing under-TV clutter, the PS4 and Xbox One will do duty as Bluray/DVD players, but the Wii U won't.
Most of the games we might be interested in are available entirely cross-platform: Minecraft, Lego Dimensions, Kung Fu Panda, etc, although presumably the graphics won't be quite so whizzy. However, quite a lot of big-name games are PS4/Xbox One only, because the Wii U isn't up to it and/or is too small an audience to justify the development. That said, most of those games aren't the sort of games I like anyway, and are certainly not games I want to encourage small children to play.
On the plus side, a Wii U can play all of our existing Wii games, including transferring save-game states and progress, which the kids will like a lot and will mean they won't whine about ditching the old Wii. (There is no room for multiple consoles, physically or psychologically.) . There's also a load of platform-exclusives that would be up our street: Zelda, Scribblenauts, Splatoon, Mario Kart, Super Mario Maker, Star Fox Zero, and possibly other Nintendo family/multiplayer things I don't know about yet.
Another downside is the Wii U is a year older than the other two, and Nintendo have already pulled an Osborne effect on it by half-announcing the Wii NX, which they will probably announce properly before too long. So not only is it a commercial flop of a platform, it's on notice of obsolescence. I'm not going to blow that much money on a platform that might stop being a live one for developers in less than a year.
So I'm thinking that actually my favoured option is "make do with the Wii you have at the moment, plus the PC and iPad". Particularly since I don't want the kids to spend more time on screens than they do already. We are not short of things to play games on. And it is real money that I could save up for something else. Like a hundred Starbucksy coffees! Or, more likely, the car giving up the ghost or stopping the house falling down in some respect.
Edit: Argh, but Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens is coming out ...
This entry crossposted to http://doug.dreamwidth.org/315622.html, where there are
comment(s) not shown here.