As someone who has both: they have their strengths and weaknesses.

Sony’s strengths are their 1st party exclusives. God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Spider-Man, The Last of Us, Ratchet and Clank, the list goes on. They’re phenomenally well crafted, enjoyable products but quite a few fall outside your kids’ age range. Some parents don’t mind depictions of violence or mature themes, some do, so keep that in mind. Most, but not all, PS4 games will work on the system without an issue though the accessories do not (for the most part, there are work arounds but it’s not an “out of the box experience”).

The PS5’s storage isn’t as easy to upgrade but it’s still really simple and much cheaper: you aren’t locked into a single vendor as you are with Microsoft’s console. As long as the drive meets the minimum required specification, you just pop it in and go.

Sony’s online services are, generally, not quite on par with Microsoft’s. They’re damn close, but MS still holds an edge here.

The PS5 has a very slight lead in display compatibility for one very specific niche: interlaced. Microsoft’s consoles only support progressive scan, Sony’s handles 1080i fairly well. Is this a problem if you have any LCD, Plasma, OLED, or DLP display made in the past 20 years? Nope. But if you have an old HD CRT Tube TV with HDMI, MS’s console won’t really work well with it without buying converters (which introduce latency and their own image quality issues).

The Xbox Series X and Series S really lag behind Sony’s console in terms of first party games. Between Halo Infinite and now, you basically had Starfield and…that’s it. There really just hasn’t been anything noteworthy released in the past 3 years. There are a few third party exclusive gems here and there (Hi Fi Rush, Ori), but not quite as many on Sony’s platform.

Having said that: Microsoft has the advantage in backwards compatibility. All Xbox One games work natively on the system: Sony has something approaching 95-97% backwards compatibility, Microsoft has 100%. Additionally, the Series X offers Xbox 360 software compatibility. While it isn’t 100% compatible, the software catalog available is massive and ranges from the most coveted Xbox 360 games to niche titles to Xbox Arcade games. 360 games are cheap, widely available online, and most hold up well to this day. So while you might be lacking in current generation first party showcases in general (let alone those that are age appropriate), you have thousands of games to choose from spanning from 2005 to date across every genre and age bracket you can care about.

Storage is easier to upgrade on the Series X (it’s literally an SSD in a cartridge form factor that pops in the back of the system) but far more expensive. You can upgrade the PS5’s SSD for about $60 per TB. Upgrading the Series X’s storage is double that cost at a minimum.

Having said that: Series first party peripherals are generally cheaper than Sony’s. A Series controller is $60 generally. A DualSense is $74. Sony’s controller has haptic feedback triggers, a touch pad, speaker, and mic but the battery isn’t user replaceable, it doesn’t have a long life, and there aren’t many games that use standout features of the controller itself. Microsoft’s controller does have a better Dpad and it works pretty seamlessly on the PC via Bluetooth.

The Series X is a more compact console than Sony’s.

The Series X also has limited display out in that it doesn’t support an interlaced output. Beyond that, it hits all of the check boxes Sony’s output does: HDR, VRR, etc.

Honestly, you can’t go wrong with either one. I lean towards the Series X because your kids are fairly young, the peripherals are cheaper, and there’s just a massive catalogue of older games to choose from that they’ll enjoy.