Wii U won't support DVD, Blu-ray playback

Wii U will not play DVD or Blu-ray movies, Nintendo has revealed.

President Satoru Iwata told investors that consumers already own devices that can play both forms of media, and that doing so for Wii U would incur additional licensing costs.

"Wii U does not have DVD or Blu-ray playback capabilities," Eurogamer quotes him 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."

The original Wii was not compatible with DVD movies for similar reasons, despite using the format for retail games.

The Wii U has been confirmed to use "proprietary high-density optical discs" for games, suggesting a similar data capacity to Blu-ray.

Yesterday, developers claimed that the Wii U will be 50% more powerful than current generation systems such as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

The Wii U will be available worldwide in 2012.

> Feature: Wii U: Nintendo's stunning new console