Did you miss the PC release it got in 2003? I thought you were going to talk about the third-person squad-based open-world Marathon spinoff it was hyped as.

You mean without in-game purchases and live service mechanics?

Did you promise them a current-gen system? I’d nominate PS3 as a better value than either. It’s old enough that you don’t give much up by “jailbreaking”, but recent enough to have internal storage (upgradeable to SSD) and native HDMI output. (If not for the latter point I’d suggest PS2, or possibly Xbox.)

Alternatively, PS Classic as a budget option. Just make sure to replace the default emulator, and prune any games that your kids might not be ready for.

/r/xbox/comments/vr2y8i/comment/iesqoey/

That’s an undercount, since it’s (mostly) games not made for any other platform, including defunct and hard-to-emulate ones. On the other hand, you could call it an overcount for including games (currently) streamable through Game Pass.