My 8 year old son wanted Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga for Christmas, so I looked at buying him a console to play it on. The 3 main choices were the Wii, Playstation 3 and the X-Box360. I was actually leaning towards the X-Box360 as I had seen the Halo 4 special edition pack for $499... but then I did some research:
The Wii looked like a fun, cheap option at $249, but it is sold out everywhere.
The X-Box360 looked like a good buy until I discovered that it just has a bog standard DVD drive and you have to add the HD Drive for extra cash and it had a reputation for mechanical problems.
I finally ordered him the Playstation 3. The 40GB version doesn't have PS2 compatability, so I opted for the 80GB version which does. It came with some driving game, a Blue Ray DVD player (which will come in handy on my plasma TV) and I bought the Star Wars game extra. I also bought an extra wireless controller, a memory card adapter (needed to use PS2 memory cards for saving PS2 games) and a DVD remote for a total of $625 including shipping. Oh, and I get to order 5 free Blue Ray DVDs too (from a small list of options).