Wii U Does Need a Blu-Ray Player, Though

I was on GameCola recently, thinking about starting, er, finishing the E3 report on Zelda: Skyward Sword that I promised to write last week. Much to my surprise, I noticed that Paul wrote a snarky art

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I was on GameCola recently, thinking about starting, er, finishing the E3 report on Zelda: Skyward Sword that I promised to write last week. Much to my surprise, I noticed that Paul wrote a snarky article about the Wii U’s lack of DVD and Blu-ray support. My response?

phoenix-wright-objection

Paul says that the Wii U doesn’t need to play DVDs, because everyone already owns a DVD player. Paul conveniently has ignored that, following this logic, the Wii U needs to play Blu-rays because…

Nobody owns a Blu-ray player.

Face it: No one in the history of the world has ever willingly purchased a Blu-ray disc. If you do own one, it’s because you accidentally bought a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack. That’s right; they give out Blu-ray discs for free, along with DVDs, because there’s no other way to get rid of them.

And of course, because Nintendo’s Wii U will not play near-useless Blu-ray discs, Nintendo is basically signing their death warrant.

Consider my DVD-playing PlayStation 2. I have owned it for, say, three years. Here are all the games I have played with this machine:

  1. The Mega Man X Collection
  2. Dragon Ball Z Tenkaichi Budokai 2
  3. Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories

That’s an average of one game per year. The rest of the time, the PS2 serves as my personal DVD player, which I use to watch TV series. In other words, my PS2 is just a glorified DVD player. Therefore, for me, it is essential that the Wii U has DVD and Blu-ray support, because those are the only features I will ever use.

So here’s what Nintendo should do to fix this situation: They should make a hardware deal with one of the major Blu-ray companies, like Sony. Sony can give them the hardware necessary to play Blu-rays! Sure, Nintendo will probably have to pay $50 to Sony on every Wii U sold, but it will definitely be worth it. Otherwise, nobody will ever buy a Wii U, just like how nobody ever buys Blu-ray discs. Make it happen, Nintendo!

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About the Contributor


From 2007 to 2016

Michael Gray is a staff writer for GameCola, who focuses on adventure games, videos and writing videogame walkthroughs.

5 Comments

  1. This is a ridiculous argument, if I may so humbly HOLD IT! First off; while not many people may own a blu-ray player, many more people own PS3s, which are, of course, blu-ray players. While they are the only console that runs blu-rays, Sony will try to guarantee that it stays that way. Also, Sony pretty much owns the format of blu-ray, so that appearing on a Nintendo system will never happen.
    I don’t personally think the Wii-U needs a DVD player. Maybe that’s because I am fine with using my PlayStation 3 to play DVDs and blu-ray discs, as well as digital media files on external devices. The Wii-U should be considered a gaming platform, because face it, Nintendo needs to start focusing on GAMES again.

  2. I think you misunderstand Sony’s victory in the blu-ray battle! I would not be surprised if the next microsoft console played blu-rays and used them as a game format like the PS3. I doubt the next console will stick with HD DVDs and I can’t imagine microsoft dumping a bunch of money into ANOTHER new proprietary media format.

    Sony owns the format blu-ray, to license to all the other consoles, like Nintendo should have done in announcing a new title, and Microsoft, more than likely, will do when they release the 1080 or what ever.

  3. I haven’t misunderstood anything. The blu-ray media format belongs to the blu-ray disc association, which is formed up of Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG (Lucky GoldStar) Electronics, Hitachi, Sharp, and Samsung. Anybody else who wishes to use it will have to pay through the teeth, and that cost will return directly to the consumer. I didn’t say that future non-Sony consoles cannot use the format, I said that future non-Sony consoles will not use the format.

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