PS3 | Xbox 360 | Wii | DS | PSP | PC
Price: approx. £300 to £2,000 Find a PC bargain
Best (recent) games: Civilization IV, The Sims 2, Supreme Commander, Half-Life 2 / Counter-Strike, World of WarCraft, Medieval II: Total War, Company of Heroes, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Football Manager, Unreal Tournament III, Crysis.
The lowdown:
While consoles rarely have a lifetime much beyond five years the PC will last you forever - as long as you keep upgrading it with new graphics cards and processors. The range of different retail games may be more limited than it used to be but the huge online communities means there's plenty of retro and fan created titles to please every member of the family.
Value for money:
Future proof: N/A
Range of games:
Pros:
State-of-the art hardware means the best graphics and artificial intelligence.
Keyboard and mouse interface remains the ideal for first person shooters and strategy games.
Free online play with huge communities providing mountains of free content for every game.
Cons:
Top-of-the-range set-up is hugely expensive and complicated to maintain.
Each game has different hardware requirements which may or may not run on your machine.
Increasingly narrow range of genres supported by major publishers.
