Following the mystifying Wii U console, uh….scratch that; controller reveal at E3, Nintendo have now announced that the Wii U will not feature DVD or Blu-ray playback capabilities. This isn’t a big surprise as Nintendo had hinted at such a decision earlier at E3. Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s president and CEO explained, “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.”
Nintendo had already briefed the media that Wii U games would come on a proprietary high-density optical disc format, which would be identical to a DVD. Even though this announcement takes video playback via optical media out of the equation, the availability of such entertainment via an online service is not out of the question. For now, however, the Wii U is a console that’s being tailored strictly for gaming.