Wii U or Xbox 360 for my parents?

Sinfulfate

Sinfulfate

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Im trying to decide which to get for my parents for christmas.  My parents don't do much gaming so their primary uses would be so they can have internet browsing, youtube, facebook, etc on their big tv in the living room.  I think my parents would enjoy the Wii U more becauce they could use the gamepad like a tablet around the house and my Mom could keep playing her Wii games on it but I'm worried about the OS.  I heard that the OS is slow and that the apps can be buggy, is this true?  My parents are 59 years old and to them understanding how to use a universal remote control is hard so I want to get them something thats easy to use and works 99.9% of the time.

Im getting an xbox one so if I do go with the Xbox 360 I could just give them my current 360 with kinect to save some money.  Im really leaning towards the Xbox 360 because of this and becuase I dont think my parents will have too much trouble learning how to use it. So for anyone with a Wii U would you recommend it for parents who have very little computer knowledge? 

 
Even I have some trouble figuring out the 360 UI, so I'm not so sure that would be a good choice.

The WiiU has a pretty accessible interface, especially with the gamepad, but the range on it probably won't go throughout the house.  Since they have a Wii, the ability to use a Wii remote would also probably be useful for them.  The touchscreen on the gamepad would probably be a lot more handy than a 360 controller for using youtube, facebook, etc.

I'm wondering if either of those are really the best option though?  You know your parents better than I would, but are you sure they would want to do those things on the TV instead of getting a tablet or something?

 
If they don't play games, why not a Roku box or a blu ray player with those features? 

Why would you give them your Xbox 360? Don't you go back and play old games? Do people generally get rid of their old consoles the second a new one comes out?

 
tonyv4 said:
So to clarify your mom does do some gaming which is on the wii? What about your dad?
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Ya my Mom plays the Wii. My dad doesn't play the Wii, but he does play poker games on PC. If I give them my 360 I was planning on getting him one of those poker games on XBLA.

ihadFG said:
Even I have some trouble figuring out the 360 UI, so I'm not so sure that would be a good choice.

The WiiU has a pretty accessible interface, especially with the gamepad, but the range on it probably won't go throughout the house. Since they have a Wii, the ability to use a Wii remote would also probably be useful for them. The touchscreen on the gamepad would probably be a lot more handy than a 360 controller for using youtube, facebook, etc.

I'm wondering if either of those are really the best option though? You know your parents better than I would, but are you sure they would want to do those things on the TV instead of getting a tablet or something?
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If I give them my 360 I will have them just use kinect voice commands and I will pin all the apps they would use to the pin tab so they never need to navigate past the main menu. When the Wii U launched, I heard that it would freeze and the only way to shut it off was to unplug it. Im not sure if thats still the case but my parents don't have the patience for stuff like that.

I thought about getting them a tablet but I dont think it would give them the same value as a console. My parents wouldn't take the tablet out with them, for fear of losing it, so I feel like having something like the Wii U gamepad would be a better alternative.

Spokker said:
If they don't play games, why not a Roku box or a blu ray player with those features?

Why would you give them your Xbox 360? Don't you go back and play old games? Do people generally get rid of their old consoles the second a new one comes out?
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They have a blu ray player but it only has apps like netflix and pandora. What they really need is just a second device for internet browsing since they only have one desktop pc which isn't located in the living room with the main tv.

I have 5 different consoles, there are way too many games for me to play to have any desire to go back and play old games I have already beaten. And Im not like most of people on this site, I don't hoard games so I have no backlog. If I buy a game I play it right away and if I like it enough I go for all the achievements and never play it again. Because of this I have played/beaten every game Im interested in on xbox 360 so there really isn't any reason for me to hold on to my 360.

 
I use a PS3 with the sony remote to watch netflix, hulu plus and netflix but it would be terrible for internet browsing. It sounds like the wii u would be good for them, the UI was very slugglish at launch but it is better now (still not as fast I want it to be). The netflix, youtube and hulu plus app work great and the tvii feature might be good if they have cable.

But if they would use it I would recommend a nexus tablet with chromecast.

 
Spokker said:
If they don't play games, why not a Roku box or a blu ray player with those features?

Why would you give them your Xbox 360? Don't you go back and play old games? Do people generally get rid of their old consoles the second a new one comes out?
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This.

I say just let your mom continue to play wii games. If she isn't that interested in gaming, there's probably no point in getting a wii u or giving them your xbox 360.

I don't think you'd want to do this, but maybe get them each a nook HD or Kindle fire. I know those are kind of expensive, but your parents would probably get more use out of them.

 
The Wii has Internet, Youtube, Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix apps for free.  If they don't care about hi-def and those apps work, then I don't see any reason for them to upgrade, unless your mom wants the Wii U.

 
The Wii U is probably best. That Game Pad is quite nice for when it comes to typing stuff. You also don't have to pay extra to use its interney functionality.
 
Sinfulfate said:
When the Wii U launched, I heard that it would freeze and the only way to shut it off was to unplug it. Im not sure if thats still the case but my parents don't have the patience for stuff like that.
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This is not a problem any more. It happened to me once or twice the first week the Wii U was out. But my son now uses it EVERY day (mostly to mess around on MiiVerse) and it hasn't happened to him at all. It really is much better for web browsing than any other console and your parents might even enjoy the Tvii feature. That gets ridiculed here on CAG but it really is kind of nifty. We used it tonight to figure out which channel had the Blazers game. Plus my son thought it was pretty cool that he was seeing the scores BEFORE they happened on TV (that was just strange - the graphical game update on the Wii U was faster than whatever delay there was in the TV broadcast. He'd call out a score just before it happened on TV!).

If your mother has downloadable Wii games she can transfer those over (as well as any and all game saves from regular games). And she can truly get rid of her Wii then - only one console will be needed. The true backwards compatibility of the Wii U is a great advantage over the PS4/X1 IMO.

The Google Earth-like app on the Wii U is also pretty fun to play around with and the Gamepad makes it more interesting than simply using Google Earth on a PC.
 
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I'd go with a Wii U as well but for multimedia/streaming/etc. have you considered something like a Roku box or even just a PC with whichever multimedia OS/app solution you think would be user-friendly for them? (I just know that consoles, unless hacked, kinda suck for the filetypes/codecs which I need supported is all)

 
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