Nintendo and I have a long and rocky relationship. They routinely spring phenomenal games on me and innovate in ways that I never thought could possibly work. At the same time, they habitually drive me nuts by going out of their way to avoid adopting base-level features that gamers have come to expect from home consoles. The recent revelation that their next platform will not be capable of playing either DVDs or Blu-rays definitely falls in line with that latter tendency.
It was already known that games for the console would play on proprietary 25 GB discs, and that sounded just fine. But now Satoru Iwata has stated that this is their position on movie playback: “enough people already have devices that are capable of playing DVDs and Blu-ray[s], such [sic] it didn’t warrant the cost involved to build that functionality into the Wii U console because of the patents related to those technologies.” What a ridiculous statement, emanating from a company that has led us all to expect such ludicrousness.
Yes, untold numbers of gamers already own one or more devices that play DVDs and/or Blu-Rays. And yes, many millions rely heavily on streaming services over physical discs. However, that does not mean that having such functionality in the Wii U wouldn’t appeal to anyone. How many of you have powered on your 360 or PS3 to watch a movie/TV show and ended up playing a game when you noticed a friend(s) online. If you’re anything like us, this has probably happened to you on quite a few occasions. Not giving players one more reason to turn on their Us is asinine.
[Source: IGN]
[Image via Geek.]
