Overview
Nintendo (任天堂, Nintendō) is one of the world's largest game manufacturers and a and distributor of home leisure equipment. It manufactures and sells home video game consoles such as the Nintendo DS and Wii, card games such as hanafuda and karuta (types of japanese playing cards), go and shogi (japanese board games). The company is also involved in the development and sales of game software for it's own devices.
History
The company was founded in 1889 as Nintendo Karuta (also can be read as Nintendo Koppai) with the founder being Fusajiro Yamauchi (山内 房治郎), the great-grandfather of Hiroshi Yamauchi (山内溥), distributing hanafudas. The company's head office has consistently been in Kyoto, and until recently, the company was reluctant to expand it's Tokyo base.
The company has a unique stance: it does not engage in any field other than the entertainment business, it is debt-free and holds vast cash assets, and it does not engage in any business world activities.
Fusajiro was a craftsman, but he also worked as a cement and limestone supplier wholesaler for the Haiko Cement Company (the original family business of the Yamauchi family).
According to the history of the Haiko Cement Company, Haiko and Nintendo became independent from the Yamauchi family when Genzō Yamauchi (山内 源蔵) became the third generation owner of Haiko. This is due to Genzō marrying Kō⁕ (by marrying into his wife's family) with her to inherited Haiko while her sister Kimi⁕ (Sekiryo Kaneda's monther) inheriting Nintendo.
After Hiroshi's grandfather, Sekiryo Kaneda (金田 積良), also known as Sekiryo Yamauchi (山内 積良) succeeded to the head of the family, the groundwork was laid for the store Nintendo into the current corporate Nintendo.
⁕The author may have some info wrong around here and Kō was a guess. I believe her name is Kō Yamauchi (山内孝). On Hakio's site her name is typed as 孝, this can be the the masculine name Takashi. I searched this up and besides a family tree with her name I only found a man named Takashi Yamauchi. 孝 can also be Kō and on the Japanese pixiv page on this, her name is typed as 考, a character that can also go by Kō.
⁕ Kimi Yamauchi (山内君) is also a guess.
After Sekiryo's death from illness at the age of 66, his grandson Hiroshi, then 22, succeeded him as president of Nintendo, and through a process of trial and error described below, he was able to build Nintendo into a global company.
Starting with the hanafuda cards, the company became the leader in the Japanese playing card industry, succeeding in the manufacture and sale of amusement products such as playing cards, Ogura Hyakunin Isshu (card game of uta-garuta), mahjong tiles, and Go and Shogi products.
These products are still being manufactured today after the failure of the following diversified businesses, and the company maintains the top market share in Japan for playing cards and hanafudas.
From the 1930s to the early 1950s
When Hiroshi Yamauchi visited the United States Playing Card Company, the largest company in the card game industry, he was disappointed in the card game business when he saw that the world's largest company was a small company and the factory was a manual operation. This lead him to develop a diversified business because he felt that he could not grow without entering into other industries.
He developed instant noodles, which can be eaten in three minutes by pouring hot water over it. Other things he tried was management of hot spring inns and the cab business (the cab company he later let go of started managing love hotels, which was often mistakenly believed to have been run by Nintendo).
The company withdrew from these various businesses with poor results. The company then entered the arcade business, which became a stepping stone to the hardware business that followed. During this period, the famous Gunpei Yokoi joined the company and launched toys such as the Ultra Hand and the Video Shooting Series (NES Zapper). These were a hit, and Nintendo succeeded in establishing a certain position in the toy industry. Yokoi also created several arcade games. Another famous toy is the Love Tester, but it did not sell as well as the aboved two toys (although it has since appeared frequently in Nintendo games and has been re-released by other companies, so it was not a waste of time).
Finding a way into the entertainment industry with the constant success of it's arcade business, Nintendo planned to create and market a large-scale amusement machine using a bowling alley that had gone out of boom. Although sales were good, the oil crisis that had just occurred caused all reservations to be cancelled, and the company was saddled with a huge debt.
Incidentally, the company has a history of supplying peripherals, the ray gun (light gun), for the world's first home video game console, the Odyssey by Magnavox. The original Video Shooting Series had a bean bulb (light emitter) at the muzzle and a solar cell (receiver) at the target, but this was reversed and the receiver was attached to the muzzle to detect a cathode-ray tube target.
Because of this connection, Nintendo licensed the Odyssey and released a Color TV-Game 15 in 1977. Although the Color TV-Game became a popular product, selling about 1 million units, the debt was never paid off.
Game & Watch and Donkey Kong (1980)
In 1980, with the success of Game & Watch, the company paid off all its debts.
Based on this experience and reflection, they since made it an unwritten rule to never get involved in any other type of business than entertainment.
The arcade game Donkey Kong released in 1981 was also a big hit, giving the company a foothold to enter the U.S. market.
The company also provided software for other companies' hardware, as Donkey Kong was ported to ColecoVision along with Zaxxon (Sega), also developed by Ikegami Tsushinki.
NES - Present (1983 - Onward)
In 1983, the Famicom was launched. In terms of software, the Famicom boom became a social phenomenon, led by Super Mario Bros., which later became the cornerstone of video games in general, and the first titles of famous series such as Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Fire Emblem were all released during this period.
After this period, the company has not provided any software to other companies' hardware.
The Nintendo Entertainment System was made as a redesigned of the Famicom to have a more appealing look for western audiences. It was released in American test markets in October 1985. Afterwards the NES became available in other countries.
In 1989 in Japan, the Game Boy was released, followed by the Super Famicom in 1990. The Game Boy came out later on the same year in North America and in late 1990 in Europe. Just like the Famicom, the Super Famicom had a international redesigned called the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, with South Korea calling it the Super Comboy.
The Game Boy game Pokémon (1996 in Japan) was another social phenomenon-level worldwide, followed by the Game Boy Advance, and then again by the Nintendo DS.
Meanwhile, during the Nintendo 64 to GameCube era, the company lost the top share in game console sales to SCEI, but regained the top share in Wii production and sales, again creating a social phenomenon that has not been seen since the Famicom/NES.
Although the successor consoles, the Nintendo 3DS and the WiiU, have struggled, the company has maintained the top share in the portable game console market and continues to hold firm to its dominant share in game software sales alone.
In 2014, the company began selling amiibo, character figures and cards that are linked to games.
In 2017, the company launched the Nintendo Switch. In addition to winning the Internet Buzzword of the Year award, it has already shown a great deal of excitement, with the largest number of software titles released in it's first year.
The Super Smash Bros. series features a gorgeous competition of Nintendo all-stars from the above-mentioned famous series (although there are a few scattered differences in image and setting from the original work for reasons of integration).
The company is one of Japan's leading super-operating companies, with assets on hand to cover employee salaries for nearly a decade and debt-free operations during a prolonged recession, making it unusually strong even by the standards of other industries in the ups-and-downs of the entertainment products industry.
Even during the N64-GC period, which was said to be a difficult time for the company, it managed to remain profitable (and even achieved record profits during the GC period), indicating that it has excellent management skills.
In FY2011, the company posted a loss for the first time since it was listed on the stock exchange, due to the cost of 3DS falling below cost and the appreciation of the yen.
However, from FY2014 onward, the company has recovered and is again firmly in the black.
The company has maintained such sound management that in March 2014, when a member of the House of Councillors Budget Committee asked what the company's growth strategy was, former Prime Minister Abe cited "making Japan like Nintendo" as an example of management.
Mr. Hiroshi Yamauchi, who fostered Nintendo as a game company, had a management philosophy that he took pride in as a manufacturer of entertainment products, such as "Software is the main thing and hardware is the secondary thing", "Hardware is a box that people have no choice but to buy in order to play software", and "Always give people new surprises".
As a long-established company representing Japan, it is often featured in newspapers and magazines that have nothing to do with the video game industry, and its announcements of new hardware and business plans attract a great deal of attention. The company is also famous for its attentive support system, such as its 24-year history of accepting repair requests for Famicom consoles, and has many heartwarming episodes with consumers.
March 17, 2015. The news of the partnership between Nintendo and DeNA, which until then had remained skeptical and passive about the smartphone game market, came as a shock to all quarters (it was revealed that Nintendo had refused the partnership until they had a satisfactory reason for it).
In terms of game design, there are gradually opportunities for Nintendo's characters to appear in other companies' software (third parties), which has not been the case until now. (Example: Bandai Namco's Project X Zone 2, etc.)
Gradually, the company is increasing distribution opportunities for indie games so that they can be played on its own hardware as well, reflecting the times.
On April 12, 2022, the city of Kyoto selected the city-owned land adjacent to the head office for effective use, which had been advertised through a public call for proposals on December 8, 2021, and acquired the said city-owned land; the second development building (tentative name) at Nintendo's head office is scheduled to be established in December 2027. The completed building has a slightly vertical shape. The height of the building is approximately 72m (this is just an image, so some parts may be slightly different after completion).
Regarding Game Design
One of the characteristics of games developed by Nintendo is the stance of thinking about design based on the function of the character.
The hat and mustache of Mario, one of Nintendo's most popular characters, were originally added to make it easier to tell the character's orientation with a small number of dots.
The overalls and gloves were also intended to show that the character was walking, jumping, and raising his arms.
The stance of the developers was carried over to later titles.
- In Super Mario Bros. if you fall into a hole in the stage, you're out in one hit. → Then, let's make it so you can fly and avoid both holes and enemies. → Birth of Kirby's Dream Land.
- On the Super Famicom (SNES), there is a limit to the number of characters that can be lined up at one time. → Then let's superimpose Mario on top of them. → Yoshi is born.
- This time Link will turn into a wolf! → It's no fun watching a four-legged animal from behind. Put someone on its back. → Midna's coming!
- Developing a game using ink! → By making the character a squid, you can convince it to jump and swim through the ink at high speed. And on the map, it becomes an arrow → Birth of Splatoon...
There are many game consoles that have been inherited since their birth, starting with the Game & Watch and becoming more prominent after the birth of the Famicom (NES).
In addition, Nintendo Labo, a fusion of paper crafts and games, has always pursued new ways to play, such as offering the fun of operating devices that combine crafts with the sensors of the Nintendo Switch.
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