More proof that Nintendo still does not "get it" — Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has confirmed everybody's worst fear: the Wii U will once again be a gimped box. It will not be able to play DVD or Blu-ray discs. What a huge shame.

As with its current Wii console, Nintendo's successor will mostly be a box for gaming. Here's the big blow from Iwata:

"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."

While Iwata is probably right, most people do have a DVD or Blu-ray player (or PS3) to handle all their optical disc needs, not including either feature, especially when we know that the Wii U can support discs with up to 25GB of storage is disappointing. So much for longevity. I can't imagine the Wii U will last 10 years like the PS3 or Xbox 360.

Then again, Nintendo managed to sell 87 million Wii consoles since 2006 and that system doesn't have DVD playback either, so maybe not including DVD/BR features is the company's idea of "#winning."

Hey, at least the Wii U will continue to support Netflix. Hopefully, no optical disc playback will translate to a cheaper price tag than even the $300 PS3 and Xbox 360 (I mean, come on, the Wii U won't even have an internal hard drive for crying out loud).

Nintendo (Japanese), via Kotaku