NINTENDO WII U WILL NOT PLAY DVD OR BLU-RAY DISCS

When we discovered that the Wii U would also use a brand new optical disc format for its games, we wondered whether or not it would be able to play DVDs or Blu-ray discs. We figured it would be likely that Blu-ray discs would be excluded, but expected DVDs to work. Unfortunately, Nintendo says that the Wii U won’t play either type of optical disc.

We know that the Wii U will use Nintendo’s new proprietary game format, and that each disc will be 25GB in size. That’s close to, but not exactly the same size as a Blu-ray disc, and Nintendo has already said that the drives in the Wii U are not Blu-ray drives. However, most people expected that the Wii U would be able to at least play standard DVDs. Now, Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata says that won’t be the case.

In an interview, Iwata said that the Wii U “does not have DVD or Blu-ray playback capabilities.” It may not matter very much considering most people already have a device in their living room that can play DVDs, and many have Blu-ray players. Iwata also pointed to the added cost of building in DVD playback functionality into the Wii U as another reason why they didn’t want to include it. They decided they could keep prices down a bit by removing a feature that most people probably already had.