When it comes to home entertainment, our options are fairly varied. The traditional ways of entertaining yourself at home would have to be renting a movie, having a party, having people over for dinner, and so forth. But times have changed, and although we can't say that people no longer rent movies or throw parties, much of their free time is now oriented towards other ways of having fun. Computer and video games have gained serious ground over recent years, and have become a major source of home entertainment for certain demographics.



Computer games have taken the entertainment market by storm, and so have video games. Although they have been subjected to controversy, as far as children's safety is concerned, those issues have been long solved, and now every one can enjoy a computer or a video game that is most suitable for his or her age or tastes.

There are probably very few people out there who have never heard of PlaySation or Nintendo. The popularity of these video game consoles has gone sky-high all over the world, so much so that Sony released its third version, PlayStation 3, commonly referred to as PS3 back in 2005, while Nintendo has already released its fifth video game console, Wii.

As part of the seventh generation of video game consoles, Wii and PS3 are competing with each other and against Microsoft's Xbox 360 for as wide a demographic as possible. Nintendo, for instance, has spent more than $200 million in 2006 alone on publicity for Wii. Their thorough advertising campaign, which included television advertisements and Internet ads, seems to have paid off, as Wii is reportedly the best selling video game console all over the world. The demand for Wii consoles was supposedly so high in the United Kingdom and the United States that some stores had a shortage.

When it comes to preventing younger users from playing certain games, whose content may be inappropriate for their age level, Wii comes with parental controls that parents can use in order to prohibit their children from playing the games they think are unsuitable.

In terms of recognition and reception, aside from being very well received, Wii was also awarded for breakthrough technology, best hardware, best of show and was the winner of a grand award in home entertainment, as well as being nominated among the twenty most innovative products of the year 2006.

PS3 has also experienced a huge success after its release back in 2006. Connoisseurs thought highly of this gaming machine and described it as an impressive piece of equipment for home entertainment and as a must-have gadget. You can rent any of the games in PS3 and see whether these people are right or wrong. But my guess is they are right.

What you are probably unaware of is that you don't have to spend the hundreds of dollars that a PS3 or Wii purchase requires, because you can rent the games from specialized web sites. It can be as simple as placing an order, playing the game for as long as you like and then returning it in the self-addressed envelope that you have received together with the game.