For those who care about such things, there were faint rumours about a Wii console with DVD playback being released in Japan at the end of 2007. Alas, Nintendo Japan has now confirmed on their official site that the new DVD-ready Wii won’t go into production this year. It hasn’t been cancelled, mind, just delayed.

This new model is essentially identical to the current model and has all the same features - gaming, photo albums, internet channels, etc - but with the added functionality of being able to play DVDs. The same source also states that there will be no other external modifications or features, which means that we’re not getting the hard-drive we’ve been asking for. Guess you’ll have to keep on treating it like a fridge for the foreseeable.

The reason that Nintendo has given for the delay is the “need to maintain effect production in order to keep up with worldwide demand for the Wii”. Basically translated, it means they’re still swamped with demand for the current model, and see no reason to divert their attention towards anything else.

All the same, if they’re going to keep pushing back on the DVD playback, they might want to reconsider implementing it at all. The next-gen format war is all about Blu-ray and HD-DVD, so who gives a striped raccoon poo about boring old DVD? If Nintendo wanted to be really smart about this, they would divert their development costs into implementing a hard-drive into the Wii.

C’mon Ninty, at least pretend that you’re considering it!

Related Posts:
A “Wee” DVD player from Japan

Bookmark It

This entry was posted on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 3:51 pm by Bulent Yusuf
Hardware, Misc news, Rumours.