A Merry Gaming Christmas
OXCGN points you in the right direction
by Lame360gamer
©Warren Marshall
With Christmas just around the corner (a fortnight is the measurement for around the corner. A month being down the road) and with the many Australian families given a government bonus to inject straight back into the veins of our dying economy, those ridiculously unaffordable consoles little Billy has been pestering you for may not be so far out of your reach any more. The question however is what makes the right Christmas present?
OXCGN isn’t just about breathing life into the Xbox any more it’s about educating the consumer (well for the purpose of this article) in order for you to make the right purchases. The last thing you want is for little Billy on Christmas day opening up his present to find he has scored himself a copy of Viva Piñata when he has been longing for Halo 3 (don’t worry we will explain later).
With a drop in console prices and all the major retailers throwing deals at you like peddlers offering cheap trinkets, starving for your patronage it is quite easy to sink in what seems like an endless sea of package variations.
It pays to find out what the average cost of the console is prior to looking at what they are throwing in for free. It is also a very good idea to find out what you are actually getting inside the box. It’s great that the 360 has dropped down to $299 but what is it that you are actually getting for your money? Take the 360 arcade, sure it has a low entry cost but that is all you are getting. An entry level 360. No bells and whistles, the basic console.
If your kids are going to be playing a lot of games or if you are looking at investing in games that feature downloadable content later on (perfect example Guitar Hero series & Rockband) this rules out the Arcade edition. You need a Hard Disk Drive (HDD) or the very least a memory unit. HDD’s alone are quite expensive and would be much cheaper to buy a console with this featured.
This brings you to the choice of the Arcade (no HDD), the Pro (60gig HDD) or the Elite (120gig HDD) and what is right for your family? Well that depends on their gaming habits. More is better but sometimes it can be overkill.
Have more than one child fighting for the consoles attention? You will need more than the standard one controller that comes in the box. Will you be jumping online to play games with others? Unless you have an Ethernet cable to can run from your modem to your console you will need a wireless adapter and like all good Microsoft gaming accessory they are expensive! ($100+). Then you have to look at a paid subscription to jump on Live. So while the console itself may be cheap you have to look at all the extras involved.
The Playstation (2 & 3) along with the Wii don’t seem to suffer this problem but the choice in console is very limited and it simply comes down to what stores are throwing in the most games and accessories for your money. These both are wireless ready consoles and do not suffer from providing a paid subscription.
Once you have established what it is you need from your console and what you need to purchase additionally take a look at the various promotions and shop around. Four of our biggest retailers have very similar deals where they are throwing in at least one new game and a few other selected older titles. It is a good way to start the ball rolling but how often are kids satisfied? Games for all these systems can range from $20 up to $120 each
In summary here are a few points that will get you through your console shopping this Christmas:
1. Do your homework!
Don’t walk into a retailer expecting the salesman to be able to answer all of your questions. Most are employed to take your money and hand you the goods. There is nothing worse than being told one thing, getting it home and it doesn’t do what they said it can. That’s what the internet (and this great website!) is for.
There are forums you can join and post questions, websites that explain what you get and how it all works. Go into the store confident and no what it is you want.
2. Ask for a better deal
Grab your junk mail from the bin and take it with you to a store. To keep your business most retailers will try to price-match or if not better what another store is advertising. They may not be able to get it exact but they should be able to give you the equivalent.
3. Know what your kids play
With all this classification hoopla at the moment it really does boil down to the parent being smart and knowing what their children are playing. Games have really come a long way in terms of graphics, storylines, choices to make etc and the classifications (apart from R18+ but that is another story altogether) generally are placed there for a reason.
Also there is really no point picking up a gigantic Role Playing Game when your kids have little to no attention span or simply struggle to read through endless dialogue.
4. Gaming can be for the whole family
The Guitar Hero games, Scene It and now Lips are great games that can get everyone involved and encourage group participation. What better way to spend time with the kids than gaming!
5. It is going to keep costing you into the new year!
As new games are released on such a regular basis what you fork out at Christmas time is going to amount to nothing in comparison in how much you spend on games.
If your kids like mine are under eight my suggestion is to pick up one of the original NES systems of Ebay. My kids have clocked up more hours playing Super Mario Bros. & Trog than I would have when I was part of a raiding guild in World of Warcraft.
I hope this all points you in the direction for your Christmas purchase.
©Warren Marshall
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Filed under: 1st Party Titles, 3rd Party Games, Console gaming, Editorial, Parental Gaming, Xbox 360 News, Xbox Community Network Tagged: | christmas shopping, Games for sale, Kids games, Playstations games, Wii games, Xbox 360 games
