To refer to the Wii’s ability or inability to play DVD movies as confusing would be a vast understatement. Over the months before the Wii’s release, we have seen several different reports about it. Here’s a run down of what’s been announced. At E3 2006 it was announced that the Wii would play DVD movies, since it’s media format was DVD, this wasn’t a big surprise or a big deal. Then a few months down the road, Nintendo starts saying something about buying a separate dongle to play DVD movies. Still no big deal, I mean most people aren’t going to play movies on it anyway. Fast forward again to September, Nintendo now announces that you will not be able to play DVD movies with your Wii, dongle or no dongle, it ain’t going to happen. October brought us news of a new version of the Wii, available only in Japan, that would play DVD movies. Still not a big deal, in fact this sounded very similar to the obscure Japanese only Panasonic Q (DVD movie player enhanced Gamecube).

Finally, to the point, news broke today that a new DVD movie capable version of the Wii would hit the US in the latter half of 2007. This leaves me confused. First of all, if the Wii is capable of reading DVD discs (which it is), shouldn’t a software solution be the only thing required? If so I think the best way to solve the problem would be to sell the DVD playing software over the Wii Shop Channel to offset licensing costs. However, If Nintendo does in fact release a nearly identical Wii next year with DVD movie playback it will only create confusion and anger the early adopters. Nintendo has a bad habit of selling new version of consoles too quickly. It gets to the point where people just make excuses to not purchase the current version. I know a couple of people on the fence about this, and one friend has even said he was disappointed about the Wii not playing DVD movies. I can assure you, he’s not going to buy a Wii until this whole mess has been cleared up. If there is indeed some strange physical limitation that the Wii lacks to play DVDs, why not let it be. In my opinion, DVD player penetration is so steep, and prices so low that the possible dual SKU confusion would outweigh any added sales. Either way it doesn’t effect me since I have a DVD player, but I want the Wii to succeed. Nintendo shouldn’t already be talking about making a new version of the Wii, for goodness sake it’s not even out!

It’s not a launch title, but it is a reason to buy a Wii in my opinion. Some people I’ve talked to said that Smash Bros. Melee was the only reason they bought a Gamecube. It’s frenetic 4 player brawling with familiar Nintendo characters has always proven to be a great formula. Brawl should be due sometime in 2007. I’m predicting summer.

6 days to go!

Before I started blogging on Big Head Mode, I did some reviews of arcade related stuff on RetroBlast!. I just had to update a review I did earlier this year to coincide with an upcoming contest, so I just thought I would link it. This was a review I wrote of ThrustVector’s Afterburner, an arcade controls encoder. If you are not a home arcade enthusiast you will probably find it very boring, but here are the basics. In order to interface your computer into an arcade cabinet, or build a genuine arcade controller for your PC, you must map all the joystick and button presses to input into the PC. You can do this by hacking up a keyboard, or by just buying a dedicated keyboard/joystick encoder. The latter option gives you an easier, cleaner setup with more features. The Afterburner is a very nice fully featured encoder, but with a pretty steep price tag. The review is here.