Wii U Will Not Have Blu-ray Or DVD Playback Capabilities

When it launches, Nintendo’s Wii U system will not have Blu-ray or DVD playback capabilities, Nintendo revealed at a Q&A session with analysts at E3.

This is because the company feels that consumers in general already own enough devices capable of performing both those functions.

“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 president, Satoru Iwata, clarified.

This doesn’t mean the Wii U won’t have other means of offering movie or music playback, however. For instance, the current Wii is capable of accessing the Netflix service, and the same functionality will be added to the Nintendo 3DS sometime this summer.