While Nintendo's upcoming Wii U game console will be more powerful than the current generation of game consoles, don't expect the device to play any of your collection of DVD and Blu-Ray movie disks. Nintendo has posted up an English version of an investor Q&A with its president Satoru Iwata that was held during E3 2011. During that interview he states, "Wii U does not have DVD or Blu-ray playback capabilities." He added that Nintendo's reasoning for such a decision "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."
DVD movie playback has been a part of the PS2 console since its 2000 launch and for the original Xbox when it was released in 2001. Nintendo's GameCube was also launched in 2001 but used a proprietary disk format that was smaller than the traditional DVD disk. In 2005 the Xbox 360 launched with DVD playback and later released an add-on that allowed the console to play HD-DVD movies. Sony launched the PS3 in 2006 and was one of the first devices to offer Blu-Ray movie playback (it also can play DVD movie disks). In 2007 the HD-DVD movie disk format was discontinued and Microsoft abandoned the HD-DVD add-on device. The Wii used a more conventional DVD disk format but is still unable to play DVD movies although at one time Nintendo had plans to offer such support.
65 Comments
Load the comments and join the conversation!
Read the comments, ask the editors questions, show respect and join the conversation.