Trying to choose a new game system…

So our old Wii has died the death without resurrection (at least no time soon) and we’re looking at choices to replace it.

Alyssa is interested in Manga/Anime/Japanese games. I’ve been out of the gaming world for a rather long time and never had much to do with consoles but enjoyed casual FPS playing and some of the older RTS games back when I was buying them for the PC.

Options appear to be

  • XBox One: This keeps things in the Microsoft camp (we all have PCs of some sort. Being able to play multiplayer with one person on a PC and the other on the console (if this is possible) would be nice. I’d love to try out TitanFall and Halo and so far the mix of games on the Xbox looks interesting. Alyssa heard from someone that Anime games are mostly on the PS (though Steam on the PC seems to have more than we found on the PS4). I think Lorna might enjoy games that use the Kinect for active gaming. It is though rather clearly the second place in terms of popularity in the US behind the PS4.
  • PS4: Seems like the clear leader in terms of popular, current gaming consoles. As this is the current PS machine Sony is pushing it should be more future-proof than the PS3. I have the impression that it may not be doing as well in Japan as the PS3 and the list of Anime-ish games we could find that ran on the PS4 wasn’t that much bigger than what showed up for the Xbox One. It has a kinect-like accessory, but the camera is optional and expensive and I’m suspicious that this will mean that there aren’t many games that mak use of it.
  • PS3: The PS3 seems to still be available online. The list of Anime games for PS3 appears to be much larger than what is out there for the PS4 or the Xbox One. It is a ‘last generation’ console though and even at the lower price I’d worry that new stuff won’t be written for this console and we’d be trading lots of current titles agains a dearth of future options.
  • Gaming PC: I have most of the hardware to make this happen in hand already. The cases these systems are in aren’t the most portable (19″ rack mount chassis with full sized motherboards) but the systems are reasonably capable and with a small video card update can be very capable. This would cut us out of all of the console exclusive titles though. I’m no longer familiar with the sales chain for PC games either. I know that they’re no longer on store shelves. I have a steam account and there seems to be a lot of material there (and lots that is reasonably priced) so I’ll probably do something down this line in any case.

Opinions and advice are welcome. So far, every time we thought we had a clear choice made we came up short.

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