This is no longer a common personal dynamic for kids. I grew up going to my buddy's place to play CoCo and MSX, to my uncle's to play Atari 800 and Mac, and friends came over to play Apple 2 and ZX Spectrum. My kid plays with friends, but it's all online through Discord.
Whilst games were loading we used to go outside and play football or whatever. Taking turns to run indoors to check loading hadn’t crashed. I got to enjoy the rugged real world, and offline technology; for that I’m very grateful.
They sometimes go to each other's houses to play platform-specific games - the kid with the PS5 will go to the kid with the Nintendo and will play Mario something with the other kid who has an Xbox.