Wii U to Use 25GB Discs (But Not Called Blu-ray)

[fball922]

[citation][nom]Tripneye[/nom]It could be the old dead HD-DVD Standard to keep people from easily duplicating the disc[/citation]

That would be a big mistake... You can't buy them because nobody produces them. Think about how long it took (is still taking?) to bring down the cost of producing Blu-Rays, and that's with several manufacturers producing them. Now imagine having to be the sole company to bring manufacturing online for a dead format. Not financially feasible. That was a huge criticism of the N64, how expensive the cartridges were to produce.

And to anyone who states that internet video is not viable yet, I literally stream Netflix for about 30 hours a week (Family Guy makes great background noise while programming haha), and it works wonderfully.

 

[stevo777]

Nintendo always uses a proprietary media format, so I don't see them changing that strategy.

As an aside, I think Nintendo is in a very bad position now as they are paying for the mistake of making the Wii too underpowered. As soon as MS and Sony adapted to Nintendo's novel system, the Wii has almost completely run out of steam. This has forced Nintendo to push a new system out and play their proverbial hand. That allows MS and Sony to put out something more functional and much more powerful when they do release their systems. It doesn't look like MS or Sony will release anything before 2013, so they will have a serious hardware advantage and time to figure out a system that will bury the Wii U. There are so many people who already have portable tablets and other portable computing systems, it would be so easy for MS and Sony to just use those platforms to link up to their consoles and basically give the same functionality as the Wii U controller--for the most part--plus a bunch of new stuff. For instance, I'm sure MS will incorporate such functionality into Windows 8 etc... Personally, I think Nintendo is going to get marginalized in the console arena.

 

[itpro]

I wonder if this will be the CBHD disc that is the standard in China? While BluRay won the format war here, HD-DVD won out in China and is common there. Assuming that these will be made in China, using that format would make sense. It would also give the new Wii a leg up in China, where it could also play movies. The games would also be very difficult to copy, as the format is not common outside of China.

 

[Filiprino]

[citation][nom]kinggraves[/nom]I buy a game console to play games, if you need it to play Blu Ray movies then go buy a ps3. That license fee is passed to the consumer, and I don't need to pay it when I can easily get a BR player cheap these days.[/citation]

Hum, they could sell the needed software separately or do like Microsoft did with HD-DVD: sell a separate Blu-Ray unit for one of the 4 USB ports the console will have.
Those ways, Nintendo will only pay licenses for the readers or software licenses sold.

 

[jpmucha]

I wonder if anyone at Nintendo thought about licensing HD-DVD for the upcoming console's optical storage...
1> Mature technology that meets their capacity needs... Mostly lost 'war' due to 'politics' (making a little of an assumption here)
2> They can probably license it for a song...
3> Relatively few recorders are 'in the wild', so their piracy concerns should be lowered
4> They have no real concern for playing back HD-DVD movies... so who cares no studio makes HD-DVDs anymore
5> Supposedly was cheaper to make since it was derived from 'DVD' technology (if my memory serves)...

At least I think it makes more sense than making your optical discs read from outside->in as a piracy prevention technique

Just a random thought...

 

[razor512]

it would be better if they could put kiosks in various gaming stores that have a large database of games (kinda like a game ATM) then have a easy to remove hard drive that you can pull out, bring to a kiosk and it will sync the hard drive with all of the games that you own. then allow the same to be done over the internet, and make the disks optional or sell them for an additional $1 or something.

I hate game disks, especially the high capacity ones, higher density data means a tiny scratch can take out a large amount of data rendering the disk useless.

If that cant be done then make it so when you buy a game, you get a option to install it entirely to the hard drive and not need the cd at all (so if for example, a ninja squirrel sneaks into your house and uses some epic ninja move and smashes your game disk into trillions of subatomic particles, you will still be able to play your games.

 

[killerb255]

BD-XL, perhaps?

 

[eddieroolz]

I do not understand why Nintendo won't simply put media playback capabilities in its consoles. That'd make it the ultimate family-room console, if it wasn't already.

 

[blubbey]

I wonder how much AA/AF they'll have (if any) and perhaps how big a draw distance. If they're aiming for 60fps at 1080p I'd assume they wouldn't be going for 16x AA with maximum draw distance (although I could be wrong).

 

[TheViper]

@jpmucha,
Nintendo has always used Matsushita for their optical drives and optical media. But Matsushita has been staunchly against HD DVD since the beginning which is why the new console won't be using it.

 

[fir_ser]

This should open the door for bigger games on the Wii U.