E3 2011 is long gone but there’s still plenty of details left to uncover about the Wii U. It’s been mentioned that the Wii U’s GPU is built by AMD and will be equivalent to a Radeon HD4000 with support for DirectX 10.1 and ShaderModel 4.1. While this may not be uber cutting edge, it is a definite step up from the Xbox 360 and PS3. Although, we can’t help but think that the next Xbox and next PlayStation will crush the Wii U graphically, DX11 chips?
As far as DVD & Blu-ray playback goes, the Wii U will not support either. Nintendo’s CEO, Saruto Iwata, said the following:
Wii U does not have DVD or Blu-ray playback capabilities.
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.
Source: Nintendo CEO, No DVD/Blu-ray Playback
Source: Wii U GPU Reveal
That’s a pretty dumb excuse not to have it in there. I mean, at least dvd playback. The way I see it, the longer people use your system, the more likely they are to stay with it. Make it do everything, and people will like it.
I agree that it should have at least DVD playback, however Nintendo is releasing the Wii U during a real transitional period. If they have DVD support, people will probably complain that there’s no Blu-ray. Adding a Blu-ray drive in the Wii U would be expensive and I think Nintendo has a very specific price point they want to hit. So instead of having one and not the other, they don’t support either.
I think Nintendo’s next console (after the Wii U) will have some type of media playback support, since all format wars should be decided by then.
Also, “make it do everything” doesn’t work too well… /me points to the PS3 ;p