Wii U won’t play DVDs or Blu-rays

Nintendo’s new Wii U won’t have DVD or Blue-ray playback capabilities, according to president Satoru Iwata.

Iwata says that they [Nintendo] feel players already own devices that can read those types of discs. Additionally, the costs for adding the functionality to the Wii U were too high.

Will this hurt Nintendo’s chances at offering any real competition to the console giants Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3?

Probably not.

Even though players might at first feel that the Wii U weren’t offering enough bang-for-the-buck comparatively because it lacked something that the other systems had, keep in mind that the Wii couldn’t read them either and that didn’t slow sales down.