I would agree with this, however at least one more point needs to be discussed between the parent(s).
BUDGET/COST
Investment - is cost a consideration? If yes, then I'm not sure you are hard pressed to buying anything at all.. there is no advantages in buying a 360 as it leaves you without a blu-ray player and same can be said of the Wii.. Unless you are going to be buying one for the games, then the Wii for budget purposes gives a much different variety, though anyone could argue so does the Kinect for Xbox 360.
If no, then I would have to recommend the Wii U. Cost to investment ratio will last roughly six years and the Wii U is easily a worthy purchase. It's 6.2" touch screen controller is EXTREMELY intuitive and integrates amazing in the living room. It's social integration is a lot of fun with Miiverse, a great web browser, tons of media applications such as netflix, hulu plus, amazon and youtube and a realtime video/voice chat application similar to skype.
It has a built in TV remote control on the gamepad and enables the player to move the game screen from the TV to the gamepad screen (not all games can do this). This enables anyone else to use the TV for viewing programs etc. It will also have an update to it's Operating System to include a feature called TVii which collaborates all of your TV/Media subscriptions (like netflix etc.) under one singular interface.
It's family friendly and something that can be used on a daily basis and not just for games.. I honestly think Nintendo really nailed it with the Wii U.
To the tech heads, I'm pretty sure this family doesn't care about bleeding edge, it's more about what can they use/leverage out of a purchase. They are asking about the "now" not wait until ps4 or xbox 720 comes out.