My daughter is six and super-happy with the Nintendo DS. I have a 3DS that she also plays on sometimes. When she was 4, we bought one of those child-hardened Kindles and enrolled her in Amazon Freetime; she loved it.

Exactly the same progression with my five year-old. He still uses his hardened Kindle with Freetime, but for most gaming, really likes his DS I restored from a broken state on the cheap.

what if you dont like Nintendo games ?

The games are for a young child. It is quite unlikely that Nintendo makes a game that is unsuitable for or disliked by people of that age. They are the one console maker who focuses on gameplay experience instead of graphics technology.

Get a PSVita instead it's a ridiculously underrated handheld and will be going cheap these days.

But as it was a young kid we're talking about I think it's safe to say there will be something on Nintendo that they're into.

My main point was more just you really do get what you pay for and if these things on iPads bother you then please vote with your wallets and buy products from companies that actually care about quality of their software.

The console is supposedly for the kid, not you. I've never met a 4-year-old who didn't like Nintendo games.

Does not really answer my question. I don't feel that culturally these games bring much on the table. Why do you have to make 4-years old play games made for 4-years old? When I was 5 I wanted to play the games my 15 years old brother was playing.

Then don't buy a Nintendo handheld...?

proxy him and tail the logs?

There are tons of 3rd party games for the 3DS. If you can't find games you want to play on it, then you're not looking.