“Does the Wii U play Blu-ray disc?”
Unfortunately the Wii U does not support Blu-ray playback. Nintendo President, Satoru Iwata has confirmed the Wii U will not play DVD’s or Bluray discs. The Wii U will only playback their own proprietary game discs which happens to have the same storage size capacity (25 GB) as Blu-rays.
In order to keep cost low on the Wii U, Nintendo decided not to add all the different patented technologies (Blu-ray, DVD) needed to playback your movie collection. They just felt many people already have other devices for that purpose.
You will be able to stream movies, videos and TV shows to the Wii U using Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Video and YouTube, and those services will take advantage of the screen on the Wii U GamePad.
Is the lack of Blu-ray or DVD playback a deal breaker for you?