Nintendo Wii U Can't Play DVDs or Blu-Ray

Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, has stated that the Wii U will not play DVDs or Blu Ray movies.  This news comes on the heels of another dissappointing bit of news, that the Wii U may have a one touchscreen limit. 

Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of the Zelda series, said that multiple Wii U controllers likely will not be used with the Wii U system in an earlier interview.  When asked about the possibility of two players controlling the system, each with a touchpad controller, Mr Miyamoto said:

"Our basic premise is that you can use one with a system. If we got to an idea of having multiple (controllers) it might be just more convenient for people to use their Nintendo 3DS and have a way to connect that."

Later, the statement was qualified as "we're researching that possibility." 

Virtually no details were given about the Wii U's online functionality, either.  While the Nintendo press conference at E3 2011 did state that there would be "rich" online functionality, absolutely no specific details were given.  Electronic Arts seemed to imply more about Nintendo's online functionality than Nintendo themselves.

Nintendo formally announced their new console, the Nintendo Wii U last week .  Like the Wii, the Nintendo Wii U has a unique controller, and will use this controller as a differentiator in the hotly competitive console market.  The center of the large, pad-like controller features a 6.2 inch touchscreen.  This screen allows a gamer to switch from playing their games on their HDTV to playing directly on the new controller, seemlessly.  The Wii U isn't restricted to using this new controller to play games, however.  The system can also be controlled with the Wiimote, using the screen on the additional display to show extra elements of the game.  Apparently, the controller

The Wii U is 100% backward compatible with the Nintendo Wii.  However, no price was announced for the system.

In addition to the 6.2 LED screen, the Wii U controller has dual analog sticks, a user-facing camera, an accelerometer, microphone, speaker, triggers, and more.  The imagery is generated on the Wii U console, which means that the graphics are all HD, and when desired, transmitted to the Wii U controller (not HD on the controller). 

Web browsing, sharing photos, playing a game with either two screens or a single screen, and more are being shown at the E3 press conference going on this week.  However, the Wii U won't be released until the Fall of 2012.

A few months ago, Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo told Bloomberg News, "We would like to propose a new approach to home video game console. It's difficult to make 3-D images a key feature, because 3-D televisions haven't obtained wide acceptance yet."

 

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Darryl B., 6/15/2011 11:23:02 PM
Score: 0  

Oh, for GOD'S SAKE!  I can't believe that a Wii still won't be playing movies.  And I'm not one of those "the Wii sucks" people either.  The first one I can understand, but this one I can't.  But then, as someone had said about the first one (dunno if it's true or not, but here it is), it might've been to cut costs, that Nintendo might have had to pay some kind of royalties in order to play movie DVDs.  Still, I just don't see why this is happening again!

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