DVD-enhanced Wii hits Japan "latter half of 2007"
A couple weeks back, the UK's Edge Magazinerevealed the Wii would be getting a DVD-enhanced variant in Japan, sometime in 2007. Today, Gamasutra reports "California technology company Sonic Solutions have announced that Nintendo has chosen to use the company's software to allow a 'future version' of the Wii console to play DVD movies."
Interesting. With a DVD drive already built into every Wii, it seemed logical that a software solution was all that was needed to implement DVD playback on the Wii. Ostensibly, the reason for Nintendo's decision to not include DVD playback was the format's onerous licensing fees relative to the already high market penetration DVD players currently enjoy. Instead of releasing a "future version" of the console to the Japanese market exclusively, why not sell the DVD playback software via the console's online store to recoup the licensing fees?
