I bought this for my six year old daughter for Christmas and although she does love it, there are some negative points to consider before purchasing such an expensive hand held game.
1. If you do not have an internet connection to update the hand held then the functions are halved. There is also a glitch that means if the three bars reach red (which is very likely to happen within a day) and have no creditz spare, then you are unable to do anything in the game until the update that fixes this has been installed.
2. Currently there are many glitches on planet Mion (the online game)and having a day of play without something going wrong is a rarity. The most recent for us was 3000 creditz vanishing for no known reason and then not being able to interact with any of the arcade games. The good thing is that there are places to report glitches on every corner plus bots that can help you. I would imagine that the reason the online play is free currently is because there is so much still to fix on Mion.
3. Besides a few arcade games and some shopping and chatting, there really isn't much else to do on Mion yet.
In conclusion, although this is a nifty idea it is still very flawed and really I think it has a shelf life in terms of how much interest it will hold for any child. To renew the online game play will be somewhere in the region of £20 per year and in my opinion it is not worth that as things currently stand. With the popularity of this gift over the Christmas period, it now seems that the server may not be coping as now I am finding it increasingly difficult to log on.
A cute game but still has a long way to go to meet expectations.