it's not Blu-ray. there is no Blu-ray logo on the box and Nintendo would have put it in a press release.
Nintendo calls it the Wii U Optical Disc and it's supplied by Panasonic. it's a format similar to Blu-ray.
Po-ta-toe, poh-tah-to.
The disc technology is Blu-ray, without the licensing required for Blu-ray. Neither Nintendo or MS will support a Sony based format... M-disc anyone?
What I fail to see is why in Hades any of this matters. You've got a media that's prone to scratching, and extremely sensitive to such, on a gaming console. I've got scratched DVDs from the xbox and PS2 that barely play, which would be spit out as junk if they were higher density discs.
I think that the increase in storage will directly, and negatively, impact the life of these games. If you could load information onto the HDD (sounding like a PC yet), so that the disc could remain somewhere safe, I'd see this as a step forward. Unfortunately, the math doesn't look great for the little Nintendo that could.
25GB disc -> 32 GB storage -> one game per console...
Adding a HDD, if Nintendo doesn't screw the pooch there, will allow for multiple games. At that point though, why not just get a PC? $300 for a console + $80 for a 1 TB drive (very low end mind you) + $ 300 for a full complement of controllers ($80+ for the Wii, with additional features is what I'm extrapolating this value from) = $680. I can make a very capable computer at that price.
Show me the direct competitors of the consoles. You're pointing at the PC, no? A device that can play games, support multiple media types, serve as a media storage device, and occasionally be used to get actual work done. The $200 console, that became $400 when fully loaded, could compete with a PC at that price point. A console that pushes deeper into the wallet, while not providing the features to compete with the PC, is asking for failure.
All logic aside though, Nintendo will sell millions of these things.
Brand recognition, first party titles, and blind console preferences will move them off the shelf. Having owned a Gamecube, consider me jaded enough to know that one or two first party games a year will not float a console. I hate where MS is going with Durango, but the media center integration is a very nice cornerstone to build upon (read: MS actually learned when XBMC was developed). Sony is banking upon the Blu-ray, and would have been infinitely better off if they retained the Linux support they initially promised. Nintendo, once again, is inching forward just enough to stay relevant, while milking the teat of nostalgia until it will give no more.
Consider me happily playing my Steam games, 10bit mkvs, and enjoying what the internet has to offer. I think I'll stick to the PC. The stack of pristine media makes it easy to get older games up an running, even after spending hundreds of hours playing them. I might not get Halo (for years) or Mario (ever), but I can always find a game worth playing. And the final nail in the coffin, I don't have to worry about getting auto paired with simpering fools when I go online (read: CODkiddies and teabaggers on Halo). The PC is far from perfect, but consoles are getting worse as the generations progress.
people who are forced to buy them just because of some console exclusive titles 
