[1ntCobra]

Steve,

What kind of TV do you have? PS3 and XBox 360 work best on HD TVs. I don't know much about the XBox 360, but I have a PS3. With the PS3, the best TV for game playing and movie watching is a 1080p, the 2nd choice would be 720p. I have a 1080i TV which is fine for watching movies, but not so good for many games. If the game's maximum resolution is 1080p, it is fine, but many games have a maximum resolution of 720p which the PS3 downscales to 480p on 1080i sets.

For people who do NOT have HD TVs, the Wii is popular.

Something else to keep in mind with the PS3 is that it really is a computer with a blu-ray player, hard drive, usb ports, blue tooth accessories, wireless (or wired if you prefer) internet connectivity. As someone mentioned, you might find yourself upgrading the OS occasionally because some new game or movie you bought needs a newer version of the OS. Also it does not like it if your kids eject a game while it is playing. I've had to erase the saved game data from the hard drive to fix games when the kids do that. It is also possible to trash your system if you power it off during an OS upgrade. Apparently you can use an external hard drive to backup your system in case you mess it up too bad. I don't do that.

By the way, my 5 year old son loves the Lego Star Wars Game. He would play it for hours every day if we would let him. I've heard there is a new Lego Indiana Jones game that my son wants now too...

Unfortunately, it seems my kids did something to our PS3 earlier this week and can only play the games that were downloaded from the internet. They probably were messing with the setup menus and disabled the blu-ray player somehow. If you love messing with PCs, you'll probably love something like a PS3.