Nintendo Wii U: No DVD or Blu-ray Playback for You!

From DailyTech: This probably won't come as a shock to many, but Nintendo has made it clear that its upcoming Wii U console will not playback DVD or Blu-ray content according to Kotaku. The lack of Blu-ray functionality is a given; no one would expect Nintendo to adopt the disc format that is championed by competitor Sony.

However, something as simple as DVD playback seems like a no-brainer for the console maker. Nintendo left DVD playback out of North American Wii consoles (although Japanese consoles had the functionality) and this slight will extend to the Wii U.

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata stands by this decision and defended it in a Q&A posted on Nintendo's website:

The reason for that is that we feel that enough people already have devices that are capable of playing DVDs and Blu-ray, such that it didn't warrant the cost involved to build that functionality into the Wii U console because of the patents related to those technologies.

Iwata may have a point here; most households already have at least one DVD player in the house and increasing amount of households have Blu-ray players (which can obviously also play DVDs).

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