Nintend’oh! Wii U Won’t Feature DVD or Blu-ray Playback

  • Share
  • Read Later

Bad news, you guys. Or maybe just “news” if you don’t care all that much. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has let it be known that the upcoming Wii U console—despite its ability to use optical discs that are the same storage capacity as standard Blu-ray discs—won’t actually be able to play movies formatted for DVD or Blu-ray.

(More on TIME.com: The 50 Worst Inventions)

Kotaku reports Iwata as saying, “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.”

He’s got a point, I suppose, but that big 6.2-inch touchscreen controller would be mighty nice for navigating all those extras that get tacked on to disc-based movies nowadays.

And the ability to actually watch entire movies on the controller’s screen when your older brother comes into the rumpus room, pushes you off the couch, and changes the TV to watch Ultimate Fighting? Well that’d just be lovely.

On the other hand, by the time the Wii U comes out next year, we’ll surely all be in flying cars and optical media will be dead, right? So we’ll just stream everything via Netflix anyway. Except for the Wii U games, of course. Those will still be made on discs.

More on TIME.com:

Wii U Specs Disclosed, Including 25GB Optical Discs

E3 2011 Interview: Nintendo President Satoru Iwata Talks About ‘Wii U’

E3 2011: Hands-On with Nintendo’s New ‘Wii U’