apparently, although the Wii can play full-size and 3cm DVDs (like gamecube), nintendo scrapped DVD playback functionality that they promised.. their reason was to bring the cost down, and that everyone has a DVD player already. the last bit is probably true, whether it's a standalone DVD player or computer... but the Wii can already read DVD discs, meaning it has the hardware. how much would it have cost to include DVD video playback?