xboxes, playstations, and wii's - oh my!

You're in charge of getting a gaming system for your library or a local organization...

• How would you research?
• What would your criteria be?
• Which do you think you would get?

Okay - sounds like an easy enough question right? Boy was I wrong! I spent several hours reading reviews and trying to understand all the techno-gamer language to try and start forming an opinion. So here is my answer to the question...

Research --> first you need to decide who the gaming audience is - all library patrons or 18-24 year old boys - because the answer of which console to buy is heavily dependent on who is going to be playing. You can read reviews on any number of websites but I was actually able to follow most of the jargon on this site --> digital trends.

Once you have figured out your target audience then you can worry about building your criteria list on things like price, backwards compatibility, size of the unit, graphics quality, number and type of games available, type of screen it will be played on, etc.

My bottom line.... if I had to buy a console for a library first I would go home and cry....then I think I would settle on the Nintendo Wii, basing the decision on its relatively decent price ($300 to start vs. ps3 at $600), its appeal to users of all ages (vs. xbox 360 where most games seem to be for older teens), its compact size for storage (vs. the ps3), its backwards compatibility with GameCube games (both xbox and ps3 appear to have some backward compat. issues), and its generally more "fun" gameplay. Now having said this... I think that if your target audience is serious gamers who want the more mature games, then Wii isnt the answer. But if I ran a library and could only buy one I would try to appeal to the masses with the Wii.