Nintendo says Wii U will not support DVD or Blu-ray Disc

If you had intentions of ditching your DVD or Blu-ray player when the Wii U launches next year, you may want to rethink that plan.  In a recent investors call, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata made it very clear that the system would support neither disc format.  The only format the device will support is Nintendo's proprietary 25GB game disks (and potentially the disks of it's predecessor, the Wii).

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Iwata felt strongly that this was the correct move justifying it by stating:

"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."

Iwata isn't wrong, most people have at least a DVD or Blu-ray player in their home if not multiple players.  What's most interesting is how transparent he was being about Nintendo not wanting to shell out for the patents for DVD and Blu-ray.  Iwata has already stated that the Wii U is "not going to be cheap."  Adding support for DVD and/or Blu-ray could potentially drive the price of the console up enough to make it unappealing to consumers.

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While Iwata is saying no DVD or Blu-ray, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime is talking about the overall value that the console will bring.  When asked if the system would be priced in line with the PS3 and Xbox 360, Fils-Aime said:

"Absolutely. And again, what I want to focus on is, is it going to offer the consumer a competitive value when it comes out, and the answer is absolutely."

Reggie claims competitive value but how is that possible when both of those systems offer at least DVD playback?  That combined with Nintendo's past of terrible online gaming support makes the Wii U already feel like less value for the same buck, if the system comes in anywhere near it's competitors price wise.  It seems like Nintendo is banking on the novelty of the new controller to sell systems, something that proved true for them with the Wii.  However, with 3DS sales below expectations it may not be wise to pin everything on what could amount to another gimmick.

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