us news today: Take a very, very close look at the round-edged Wii U proprietary discs

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Take a very, very close look at the round-edged Wii U proprietary discs

There's something immediately striking about Nintendo's Wii U proprietary disc format that's hard to notice in photos -- it's got rounded edges, both outside and in. It feels different than any other disc we've handled before; Tim swears he's seen a round-edged disc in the wild, but we've never seen such a thing ourselves. It's as if the folks at Nintendo took sandpaper to every edge of every disc, making them all the more friendly to the touch. It's a little detail, but it's a nice one.

As we learned when the console was initially announced, the Wii U's "proprietary high-density optical discs" hold up to 25GB of data -- equivalent with that of Sony's single-layer Blu-ray format on the PlayStation 3, and much larger than the Xbox 360's dual-layer DVD format. Of course, all logic and statistics aside, having now handled a round-edged disc, we never wanna go back. We've taken some super up-close photos of Wii U karaoke title Sing Party, as well as comparison shots alongside its hard-edged Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 brethren, which can be found in the gallery below.

Gallery: Nintendo Wii U proprietary disc