You are about to shop for a new video game machine for someone, or even for yourself, and you may be wondering what is new and what to buy. While the various features should be what sells a fun entertainment hub for your home you may instead be stuck feeling that you are choosing the lesser of two evils. While wringing your hands and certainly emptying your wallet you might not be looking forward to the purchase.

For some people it may be almost a necessity. If you are one in four Xbox owners, there is a good chance that you may be shopping for your second, second generation game console system. You may even be one of the fewer, but out-more-dollars unlucky early adopters of the Sony machine. One in five PS3 owners now have difficult choice before them after theirs has bricked.

There are lots of new words to digest too, fat, slim, bundle, gigabytes, online enabled, or Kinect and Move required. Just how do you make your way through that mountain of hardware on offer? Or how do you even respond to sales people who ask, “What do you have in mind?”

To start with take plenty of time before you go out on the hunt to decide what you want. Don’t try to figure it out at the store because there are too many distractions, and too much information to process all in one swoop. At home, and preferably online, the first question you ask yourself should be “What are we planning to do with this?” “Who will use it the most and what is the age?”. The age group and the ultimate goal that you have in mind will help you to determine what to buy. Something else to watch for are holiday “bundles” which means that a console may come with free games, or be decorated to match with a popular game release. These can be a good value. Make sure though that you are not sacrificing anything, such as getting a box with a smaller hard drive that has been pushed onto customers along with the holiday packaging.

If you have toddlers and little kids under ten years old then it is a pretty easy assumption to make that something from Nintendo will do the trick. The current game console from the kid friendly company is called the Wii, and it is still their top of the line item. It has been out for a few years now and it has the best durability record from the top three game console companies.

Last year the Wii topped sales charts with titles like Wii Fit, and Mel B Fitness. The Wii is best known for fun peripherals. The Wii Fit Balance Board gives you access to motion controlled sports games for the least amount of money compared to the other systems. With it you can participate standing upright and moving along with the activities and exercises, including strength training, aerobics, yoga, snowboard and skate boarding. The latest thing is a drawing pad peripheral that puts your own art onscreen and acts as a controller for a new series of games.

Classic Nintendo games never go out of style and always lead holiday sales charts every year. Disney’s Epic Mickey for the Nintendo Wii, and a cute Epic Mikey Paintbrush controller skin is certain to be on many kids wish lists. Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Wii Party and Just Dance 2 are all top popular crowd pleasers.

This holiday season will bring much more plastic junk to your living room than ever. Both the PS3 and the Xbox have motion control packages this year. It means that a new set of games will be out to go long with the new peripherals. If you have older kids, or teens either of these choices might work. If someone is talking about ‘Kinect’ that means the new add on for Xbox. The ‘Move’ is the similar motion controller product from Sony, which you might not have heard as many people talking about, since it is trailing behind the other two in sales. Although, each PS3 costs at least one hundred dollars more.

The PS3 tends to have more titles for teens and mature gamers than the Nintendo Wii. It has many value advantages as a purchase for young teens and adults.
One of the weaknesses of the PS3 console might be a strength. The Sony Playstation does cost more than the Xbox. But there is no monthly fee for the online network service that they offer – PSN. You can use the internet capabilities such as browsing the web on your TV, at no additional cost as long as you hook it up to your existing home network. The PSN network is used inside games to communicate with other players, and to download updates. The PSN is less ‘populated’ than the Xbox counterpart. Since the language used in games can’t really be monitored by parents caution is advised when allowing young kids and teens to sign on from within a game.

The Playstation Move is a set of two glow ball tipped controllers and the Playstation Eye that you will need to get to go with a PS3. Games with shooting and sword play have been released that take advantage of the two-fisted controls. Recently a Kung Fu game has come out that utilizes the Playstation Eye, and no controllers are needed.

The Playstation 3 reads almost any type of disk and has a very good Blu Ray movie player which the Xbox does not have. Both consoles do stream movies from Netflix if you have an account with them. The newer PS3 nicknamed the slim, may not have an SD card reader to put the photos from your digital camera directly on your hard drive. With an inexpensive USB card reader you can work around that problem and use the PS3 photo gallery to make slide shows and view your home movies.

Some of the top PS3 titles this year were God of War 3, Sly Cooper, Final Fantasy XIII, Red Dead Redemption, Just Cause 2, Dead Rising 2, and Fallout New Vegas.

The Xbox 360 has had something of a second coming with the release of the Kinect. To use it you will need to pick up the Kinect kit and hook it up to your Xbox. It takes up a good sized open space to play it, in a well lit area. So you may have to shuffle things around a little in your home to accommodate it.

Dance Central, and Zoomba Fitness commercials show people jumping and dancing around so enthusiastically that it has been very successful. The fusion of video games, music and dance have culminated in the Kinect phenomenon. For now there aren’t many games for it, but the response has been outstanding, and it has been predicted that they will run out of the Kinect before December 24th.

Some of the new games coming out can be played with the Kinect’s controller-less camera interface. Those would be called Kinect compatible, and those games which will not operate without it at all are called Kinect required.

To play games online on the Xbox 360 you will need to pay for an account. Monthly fees are charged and you must have a credit card to join the Xbox network called Live or XBL. The Xbox has garnered an enormous thriving, online community over the years. The PS3 just has not been able to become anywhere near as popular. There are many teams and groups to join in with to play games, and compete. However parents should monitor the online activity of kids because you cannot control what is being said by other players. Microsoft has attempted to install a profanity filter, due to the years that XBL had a notoriously bad reputation. The “trash talk” is rampant on XBL, so parents and lady gamers beware.

As the larger community, Xbox usually has the privilege of getting games released sooner, and gets more exclusive games and content. For older teens, and adults it is difficult to say which console is more hardcore, the answer would be to have both the Xbox and the PS3. Even though there are games which are cross platform, which means they are made for more than one console, each machine is different. The catalog of games for each one does vary, and online they are portals to different worlds. Sometimes a favorite game which is limited to one platform or the other is what ultimately seals the choice.

Some of the top popular games on Xbox 360 right now are Call of Duty Black Ops, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, Fable III, Star Wars Force Unleashed, Medal of Honor, the Sims 3, Tron Evolution, and Kinect Sports.