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Console Time Controls

M

Michael73

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 27, 2007
1,082
41
Just a quick question for those out there with an Xbox 360/Wii/PS3...

I have a 6 year old who has been asking for nearly a year to get a Wii or Xbox 360. My wife and I will finally cave this holiday season but I'm worried. My son has a very addicting personality and it will be virtually impossible to tear him away from the console. On my mac he has his own profile with parental controls. The parental controls limit his time to 30 minutes during the week and 60 minutes on the weekend. Is there anything similar on any of the consoles? Can I set up a user profile for him with time controls?
 
MRU

MRU

macrumors Penryn
Aug 23, 2005
25,368
8,948
a better place
The 360 has parental controls too, which include family timer, and content control as well as online control too.

Basically you can set the 360 to allow him to only games safe for his/her age. 30 minutes a day. And no access to online. etc...


I'm not sure the wii has any of those facilities.
 
M

Michael73

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 27, 2007
1,082
41
MacRumorUser said:
The 360 has parental controls too, which include family timer, and content control as well as online control too.

Basically you can set the 360 to allow him to only games safe for his/her age. 30 minutes a day. And no access to online. etc...


I'm not sure the wii has any of those facilities.
Click to expand...


Thanks. Prior to posting the question I did a quick Google search and found the Family Timer control but I wasn't sure if the control was for the whole unit or could be fine tuned by user. While I'd limit my son to 30 minutes a day, I'd like to be able to play myself after he goes to bed in the evening for an hour for example. I also have a 4 year old who will want to play so I'd set up 2 separate users one for each kid just so the older one didn't use up the time of the younger one.

Any Wii users want to chime in?
 
fireshot91

fireshot91

macrumors 601
Jul 31, 2008
4,721
1
Northern VA
The Wii has a parental control option in the System Settings screen. I can't say from experience if it has a time limit or not, as I can play whenever I want to. :p
 
JackAxe

JackAxe

macrumors 68000
Jul 6, 2004
1,535
0
In a cup of orange juice.
The Wii doesn't have a parental control timer, but I read that originally they were planning on including one. The reason they didn't, is that the Wii logs a history of every game played and every channel accessed, and how long they were played/visited.

This is Nintendo's reasoning for doing so;
Aoyama: "Instead of instituting some play limit ... this allowed parents to monitor and discuss how much their children were playing ... this is why you can't erase the play history on the console."

You will be able to prohibit access to certain channels, or any Wii/VC game that's above a certain rating.

Considering your kid's age, the Wii's overall library is a better choice than the other consoles, as it's more kid and family orientated.

Anyways, I really like my Wii, it has some great games on it.
 
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