Japan To Get Wii With DVD Player, And Fewer PS3s At Launch

Japanese gamers received a good news and a bad news this week: one has to do with Nintendo's Wii, and the other one with Sony's PlayStation 3. Guess which one's the bad news... Indeed, but we'll leave that for last, and start off by announcing that Nintendo confirmed they plan to launch a new version of the Wii in Japan next year, equipped with a DVD player. That's right - the same DVD player that everyone expected to be included in the first batch of Wiis, only to find out the opposite in September.

Reports of an "enhanced" Wii with DVD function appeared in the latest issue of Edge magazine, and were confirmed yesterday by GamesIndustry.biz.

Speaking to GI.biz, a [Nintendo] spokesperson declined to comment on when the new machine will hit the shops, but did confirm, "There are currently plans to release a version of Wii in Japan featuring DVD playback."

He added, "There are currently no plans to bring this model to Europe or the US."

That last part may come as a disappointment for us Westerners, but rest assured it isn't nearly as disappointing as the other next-gen news to hit Japan this week.

In what seems like an unending string of bad news (or bad rumours) for Sony, the Japanese newspaper Nikkei Keizai Shimbun is reporting that Sony has been forced to cut its day one Japanese allocation for the PlayStation 3, from 100,000 units, to just 80,000. Component shortages are said to be the cause of the reduction, and they may lead to a similarly depreciated figure for the US launch (which, for the time being, is set at around 400,000 PS3 units).

In fact, just last week there were also some doubts regarding the amount of units available from day one (November 17) in the US. At that time, SCEA's co-chairman Jack Tretton admitted that shipment figures were "more of a target", so it's not unlikely at all that they may end up shipping fewer PS3s in North America. Only 16 days left until we find out...

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