I wanted my little kid to take advantage of electronic devices/media and learn things better, have sharp mind.
I bought him Little Touch Leappad by Leapfrog while he was 6 months old. That’s what the device said, that you can start giving Little Touch Leappad to 6 months old and child can grow up with motor skills and all the knowledge about Alphabets, Numbers, Shapes (like Square, Triangle, Circle) or Color recognition. Initially we have to use our own finger to guide him, but soon he picked up to press signs on the paper sheet on his own. He used that till the age of 3.
Now that he grew up, I bought him Leap pad with Pen known as My First Leappad by Leapfrog, which can help the child learn writing letters and also use the pen effectively.
Once my child reached the age of 6, I felt that Leapfrog is not really offering great innovation and found some nice educational titles with Nintendo DS lite. So I bought Brainage 1, 2 and Mathematics. Primarily these were titles which motivated me to buy Nintendo DS lite. I also purchased Mario, since I feel that is the classic game my kid should know. Mario is addictive, but not harmful from Kids perspective.
These devices really help children to develop brain. I’ve seen entire analytical skill is different in young age who go through such devices and games.
Now there was a question what next?
Since my kid was growing, I had almost decided to go for Nintendo Wii. Wii is like big daddy of DS2 lite. So progression would have been quite easy. What I was looking for was better graphics. Unfortunately Nintendo put their full strength in building the controller. With Nintendo Wii you can operate everything very naturally but they didn’t do much on graphics quality.
When Microsoft announced XBox 360 with Kinect in Jan-2010, I was almost sure that Nintendo will come up with some competitive strategy. But they didn’t announce any details about future console. It seems Nintendo is now concentrating on 3D graphics but as there is not much market for 3D display units yet. So they have to stop and let Microsoft do the business with XBox. Nintendo really has nice titles with Portable DS and Wii console for young kids to learn something parallel to school education. These titles complement the school education and works really well.
There is another spoiler to this comparison. If you are thinking of buying Blue Ray player and also Game console. Sony offers good choice of SONY Play Station 3. PS3 comes with Blue Ray player. SONY has good graphics and many game titles, but they are really not in educational titles or kids gaming. Sony also started offering Move, competitive controller to Nintendo Wii.
SONY offers titles for mature and serious gamers. So even Sony PS3 was not the choice for me. Sony PS2 comes real cheap these days but same is the quality.
Microsoft XBox 360 with Kinect offers perfectly different controller and leading the game of gamers. Here controller is you. you don’t need to spend more money for adding the participants. Joystick or controllers don’t fall. XBox also offers good quality of graphics. Only problem is like SONY even XBox is not much into family gaming. To capture this region Microsoft has authored 10 game titles which position XBox into family gaming.