Nintendo Wii Fanboy

It's been a very very very very very crazy ride for the Wii in regards to DVD playback. It's still not certain if the general public really cares anyway, on account of owning about six hundred devices that play DVDs already, so it's no big deal that Nintendo still isn't doing much about their planned movie-ready console.

IGN picked up a report from a stock-holders meeting, and Satoru Iwata said outright that "With supply constraints [of the Wii] continuing worldwide, the priority is on the current model." Guess they won't be rolling out a DVD unit anytime soon. It's hard enough to get the existing console to customers as it is, let alone turn around and start dilly-dallying around by making up a new model!

Thanks to some new screenshots of the upcoming launch title Excitetruck, it now indeed looks as though we called it. That's right: if the picture here is any indication, the arcade racer will be able to read .mp3 files from your very own SD card and insert them into the game, a la the Xbox and Xbox 360. It's a nice little feature, and the ability to rock out to our latest find on Pandora while catchin' some air is quite enticing indeed.

Does this feature matter to you guys? More importantly, how many games are actually going to support it? Only the flying spaghetti monster time will tell.

In the most recent "Iwata Asks" interview, Iwata talks with Kouichi Kawamoto about the Photo channel for the Wii. Aside for some basic Photobooth functionality, Kawamoto mentions an interesting tidbit: MP3's stored on the SD card along with the photos will be played in the background during a slideshow.

While this seems horrendously not cool, consider the fact that this functionality is in fact very similar to the Xbox 360's ability to play personal tracks during gameplay. In fact, a developer could most likely easily implement this functionality into any game they desire, so keep on the look out. If nothing else, it's an easy cop-out if Nintendo wants to add an extra "music channel" to expand functionality.

Matt Cassa-however-you-spell-it over at IGN has posted a rather interesting blog post about the assumed nature of DVD playback for the Nintendo Wii. At E3 2005, it was announced that there would be a "dongle adapter" for optional included DVD playback, and there were rumors over the next year that it would simply be built-in. However, while Nintendo loves to reiterate time and time again the capabilities of its critical darling, any and all mention of DVD playback has been completely removed.

DVD playback is a feature we've come to expect not only in next-generation machines, but last generation as well. Since Wii discs are DVDs anyway, would this feature be so difficult to add on? Check out Matt's blog for a slightly more in-depth analysis, and let's hope that Nintendo doesn't take their "games only" stance a bit too far.