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My daughter, almost 5, has taken a shine to her mum's new iPhone. We decided to get her an iPod touch for her birthday so she could play games and stuff on it and load her own music to listen to in her room (she has a docking station in her room which she uses to listen to my wife's iPod as she goes to sleep). However, a friend suggested a Nintendo DS might be more appropriate, as it's got better games and is a bit more durable.

Any ideas or suggestions? And if we get a DS, which one is best?

The DS would probably be easier for a 5 year old to use, though the individual games are more expensive than the iPod's in general and there's no real free apps. I'd say which one is she more likely to actually use instead of lose interest in after a month, and which one is she likely to break the most?

I was worried about it getting broken, but honestly that's probably as easy as keeping it away from her brother. It's a concern but not a major one.

As you say, the big thing is making sure it keeps her interested. That's kind of why I like the iPod Touch, lots of apps at your fingertips. But then, the DS games are actually better, even if they cost more. Having not used either of them, I'm at a bit of a loss to separate them.

DS games are so much better it's not funny. If the ONLY thing you're getting it for is gaming, go a DS Lite. Nice and cheap, good battery life, easy to use.

adam_grif wrote:DS games are so much better it's not funny. If the ONLY thing you're getting it for is gaming, go a DS Lite. Nice and cheap, good battery life, easy to use.

It's not the ONLY thing, but its a fairly major portion of it. Are the games good for a 5yo level? She's pretty smart, but she also has little attention span for something she can't work out how to do.

Iphone games are cheaper and some are free; on the other hand, in AU you can return a DS game up to 30 days later, so they're all basically free. The most popular DS games are probably too advanced for a 5 year old, but I doubt most Iphone games would hold interest for very long.

Twoyboy wrote:

adam_grif wrote:DS games are so much better it's not funny. If the ONLY thing you're getting it for is gaming, go a DS Lite. Nice and cheap, good battery life, easy to use.

It's not the ONLY thing, but its a fairly major portion of it. Are the games good for a 5yo level? She's pretty smart, but she also has little attention span for something she can't work out how to do.

I wouldn't be inclined to recommend most DS games to a kid until they were ten or twelve, since a lot of them require a pretty significant amount of reading. If she's going to be using it more for music then the ipod would probably be the way to go.

I might suggest the iPod touch here, simply because if you buy a DS, you're only going to be upgrading it in 6-9 months. The Nintendo 3DS has already been announced for release, and when your daughter finds out that she'll be able to play 3D movies from Disney, Pixar, etc, on it without needing to wear 3D glasses, she's going to be begging you to buy it.

When was anything said about watching 3D feature films on the Nintendo 3DS?

The kid is 5, the DS is the better choice. Games are cheaper on the iPod, true, but the DS is going to be more durable than an iPod Touch, and although it can vary a bit from region to region, it's a safe bet that Nintendo's replacement/warranty policy will be a lot more forgiving than Apples.

This is getting hard now. I don't know what kind of games 5 year olds play. The first game I ever played was Doom in 1998 at age 7. Obviously, you don't want your child turning out like me.

The DS certainly is not wanting in terms of games targeted towards younger children. The trick is finding games that aren't terrible shovelware.

DPDarkPrimus wrote:When was anything said about watching 3D feature films on the Nintendo 3DS?

Iwata himself brought it up during the E3 Media Presentation, and they had them on the show floor.

Thanks very much guys, I had the DS completely decided on. Then my wife took my daughter to the shops and put the Touch on layby.

In the end the decision was made that a) she was far more natural using a touch screen than buttons... maybe I'm just a sucker for old-school, and b) lots of free games will probably keep her attention span longer than a couple of $25 games if we get the wrong ones.

And she tried them out in the shop and wouldn't put down the Touch, so it's probably best not to disappoint now we've given her the option. For the record, I told my wife not to give her the option.

adam_grif wrote:This is getting hard now. I don't know what kind of games 5 year olds play. The first game I ever played was Doom in 1998 at age 7. Obviously, you don't want your child turning out like me.

Well back in my days it was stuff like mario, teenage mutant ninja turtles, duck hunt or various other games on nintendo that I don't remember.

Twoyboy wrote:In the end the decision was made that a) she was far more natural using a touch screen than buttons... maybe I'm just a sucker for old-school

...the DS has a touch screen. Though I admit the stylus can be a bit of a problem for the kids.