Nintendo: Wii U won't play DVD or Blu-ray

Nintendo’s next generation console won’t come with playback capabilities for DVD or Blu-ray, Nintendo has confirmed.

“We feel that enough people already have devices that are capable of playing DVDs and Blu-ray,” Nintendo boss Iwata told investors last week at a Q&A session.

Nintendo claimed it would have to factor in costs for Blu-ray or DVD playback support. When building its current home console, the Wii, Nintendo had to factor in costs to achieve the opposite – to circumvent DVD playback on a system that supported it.

The company’s longstanding aim is to build entertainment devices specifically for playing games.

Nintendo previously claimed the Wii U's disc capacities would be 25 gigabytes.