Wii U Won't Have Blu-Ray or DVD Support

One of the major faults a lot of people found with the original Nintendo Wii was its inability to play DVDs. There are some people out there for whom that was a make-or-break feature and I know a few people who didn't buy a Wii for that reason alone. Well it seems Nintendo is going to upset a few people again.

While speaking to investors at this years E3 Satoru Iwata was asked about the Wii U's ability to play Sony's Blu-Ray format, and regular DVDs. Iwata gave an answer that left very little room for interpretation, stating that the Wii U wouldn't support either format.

"The reason for that is that we feel that enough people already have devices that are capable of playing DVDs and Blu-ray," says Iwata, "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."

Which if you think about it makes a lot of sense. DVD players are incredibly cheap nowadays, and it seems highly unlikely that Nintendo would pay their competitors for licensing fees for a technology that is becoming ever more obsolete. So now DVD or Blu-Ray for your Wii U, the silver lining here is that it looks like Nintendo is shooting to keep this new device at a relatively low cost.