Nintendo
On the 23rd of September 1889, a craftsman named Fusajiro Yamauchi founded a small unincorporated establishment in Shimogyō-ku, Kyoto. The company produced handmade hanafuda playing cards for local markets. Hanafuda had become popular after Japan banned most forms of gambling in 1882 but tolerated these specific cards. Sales of hanafuda cards were particularly high within yakuza-run gaming parlors in Kyoto. Other card manufacturers opted to leave the market because they did not want to be associated with criminality. Yamauchi persisted despite such fears and became the primary producer of hanafuda within a few years. As demand increased, he hired assistants to mass-produce them to satisfy the need. Even with this favorable start, the business faced financial struggles due to operating in a niche market. The slow and expensive manufacturing process combined with long durability of the cards impacted sales due to low replacement rates. To solve this problem, Nintendo produced a cheaper and lower-quality line of playing cards called Marufuku. They also conducted product offerings in other cities such as Osaka where card game profits were high. Local merchants were interested in continuous renewal of decks to avoid suspicions that reusing cards would generate. According to Nintendo, the business' first western-style card deck was put on the market in 1902. Although other documents indicate the date was 1907 shortly after the Russo-Japanese War. During this time the business styled itself as Marufuku Nintendo Card Co. The war created considerable difficulties for companies in the leisure sector which were subject to new levies such as the playing cards tax. Nintendo subsisted and in 1907 entered into an agreement with Nihon Senbai later known as Japan Tobacco to market its cards to various cigarette stores throughout the country. A Nintendo promotional calendar from the Taishō era dated to 1915 indicates that the business was named but still used the Marufuku Nintendo Co brand for its playing cards.
In 1965 Nintendo hired Gunpei Yokoi to maintain the assembly-line machines used to manufacture its playing cards. Yamauchi increased Nintendo's investment in a research and development department in 1969 directed by Hiroshi Imanishi. Yokoi was moved to the newly created department and was responsible for coordinating various projects. His experience in manufacturing electronic devices led Yamauchi to put him in charge of the company's games department. Their products would be mass-produced. During that period Nintendo built a new production plant in Uji just outside of Kyoto. They distributed classic tabletop games like chess shogi go and mahjong under the Nippon Game brand. In 1970 the company released Japan's first electronic toy called the Beam Gun. This optoelectronic pistol was designed by Masayuki Uemura. More than a million units were sold. Nintendo partnered with Magnavox to provide a light gun controller based on the Beam Gun design for their new home video game console the Magnavox Odyssey in 1971. Other popular toys released at the time included the Ultra Hand the Ultra Machine the Ultra Scope and the Love Tester all designed by Yokoi. More than 1.2 million units of Ultra Hand were sold in Japan. The growing demand for Nintendo's products led Yamauchi to further expand the offices. He acquired the surrounding land and assigned the production of cards to the original Nintendo building. Meanwhile Yokoi Uemura and new employees such as Genyo Takeda continued to develop innovative products for the company. The Laser Clay Shooting System was released in 1973 and managed to surpass bowling in popularity. Though Nintendo's toys continued to gain popularity the 1973 oil crisis caused both a spike in the cost of plastics and a change in consumer priorities that put essential products over pastimes. Nintendo lost several billion yen. In 1974 Nintendo released Wild Gunman a skeet shooting arcade simulation consisting of a 16 mm image projector with a sensor that detects a beam from the player's light gun. Both the Laser Clay Shooting System and Wild Gunman were successfully exported to Europe and North America. However Nintendo's production speeds were still slow compared to rival companies such as Bandai and Tomy and their prices were high which led to the discontinuation of some of their light gun products. The subsidiary Nintendo Leisure System Co Ltd which developed these products was closed as a result of the economic impact dealt by the oil crisis.
By the late 1970s Nintendo was struggling financially. Two key events in Nintendo's history occurred in 1979: its American subsidiary was opened in New York City and a new department focused on arcade game development was created. In 1980 one of the first handheld video game systems the Game & Watch was created by Yokoi from the technology used in portable calculators. It became one of Nintendo's most successful products with over 43.4 million units sold worldwide during its production period. The success of Game & Watch led Yamauchi to shift the company towards more electronic games in the years that followed. Nintendo entered the arcade video game market with Sheriff and Radar Scope released in Japan in 1979 and 1980 respectively. Sheriff also known as Bandido in some regions marked the first original video game made by Nintendo and was published by Sega and developed by Genyo Takeda and Shigeru Miyamoto. Radar Scope rivaled Galaxian in Japanese arcades but failed to find an audience overseas and created a financial crisis for the company. To try to find a more successful game they put Miyamoto in charge of their next arcade game design leading to the release of Donkey Kong in 1981. One of the first platform video games allowed the player character to jump. The character Jumpman would later become Mario and Nintendo's official mascot. Mario was named after Mario Segale the landlord of Nintendo's offices in Tukwila Washington. Donkey Kong was a financial success for Nintendo both in Japan and overseas and led Coleco to fight Atari for licensing rights for porting to home consoles and personal computers. In 1983 Nintendo opened a new production facility in Uji and was listed in the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Uemura began creating a new video game console that would incorporate a ROM cartridge format for video games as well as both a central processing unit and a picture processing unit. The Family Computer or Famicom was released in Japan in July 1983 along with three games adapted from their original arcade versions: Donkey Kong Donkey Kong Jr and Popeye. Its success was such that in 1984 it surpassed the market share held by Sega's SG-1000. That success also led to Nintendo leaving the Japanese arcade market in late 1985. At this time Nintendo adopted a series of guidelines that involved the validation of each game produced for the Famicom before its distribution on the market. They made agreements with developers to ensure that no Famicom game would be adapted to other consoles within two years of its release and restricted developers from producing more than five games per year for the Famicom. In the early 1980s several video game consoles proliferated in the United States as well as low-quality games produced by third-party developers which oversaturated the market and led to the video game crash of 1983. Consequently a recession hit the American video game industry whose revenues went from over $3 billion to $100 million between 1983 and 1985. Nintendo's initiative to launch the Famicom in America was also impacted. To differentiate the Famicom from its competitors in America Nintendo rebranded it as an entertainment system and its cartridges as Game Paks with a design reminiscent of a VCR. Nintendo implemented a lockout chip in the Game Paks for control on its third party library to avoid the market saturation that had occurred in the United States. The result is the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES which was released in North America in 1985. The landmark games Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda were produced by Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka. Composer Koji Kondo reinforced the idea that musical themes could act as a complement to game mechanics rather than simply a miscellaneous element. Production of the NES lasted until 1995 and production of the Famicom lasted until 2003. In total around 62 million Famicom and NES consoles were sold worldwide.
In 1988 Yokoi and his team at Nintendo R&D1 conceived the Game Boy the first handheld video game console made by Nintendo. Nintendo released the Game Boy in 1989. In North America the Game Boy was bundled with the popular third-party game Tetris after a difficult negotiation process with Elektronorgtechnica. The Game Boy was a significant success. In its first two weeks of sale in Japan its initial inventory of 300,000 units sold out and in the United States an additional 40,000 units were sold on its first day of distribution. Around this time Nintendo entered an agreement with Sony to develop the Super Famicom CD-ROM Adapter a peripheral for the upcoming Super Famicom capable of playing CD-ROMs. However the collaboration did not last as Yamauchi preferred to continue developing the technology with Philips which would result in the CD-i and Sony's independent efforts resulted in the creation of the PlayStation console. The first issue of Nintendo Power magazine which had an annual circulation of 1.5 million copies in the United States was published in 1988. In July 1989 Nintendo held the first Nintendo Space World trade show with the name Shoshinkai to announce and demonstrate upcoming Nintendo products. That year the first World of Nintendo stores-within-a-store which carried official Nintendo merchandise were opened in the United States. According to company information more than 25% of homes in the United States had an NES in 1989. In the late 1980s Nintendo's dominance slipped with the appearance of NEC's PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 and Sega's Mega Drive/Genesis 16-bit game consoles with improved graphics and audio compared to the NES. In response to the competition Uemura designed the Super Famicom which launched in 1990. The first batch of 300,000 consoles sold out in hours. The following year as with the NES Nintendo distributed a modified version of the Super Famicom to the United States market titled the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Launch games for the Super Famicom and Super NES include Super Mario World F-Zero Pilotwings SimCity and Gradius III. By mid-1992 over 46 million Super Famicom and Super NES consoles had been sold. The console's life cycle lasted until 1999 in the United States and until 2003 in Japan. In March 1990 the first Nintendo World Championship was held with participants from 29 American cities competing for the title of best Nintendo player in the world. In June 1990 the subsidiary Nintendo of Europe was opened in Großostheim Germany. In 1993 subsequent subsidiaries were established in the Netherlands where Bandai had previously distributed Nintendo's products France the United Kingdom Spain Belgium and Australia. In 1992 Nintendo acquired a majority stake in the Seattle Mariners baseball team and sold most of its shares in 2016. On the 31st of July 1992 Nintendo of America announced it would cease manufacturing arcade games and systems. In 1993 Star Fox was released which marked an industry milestone by being the first video game to make use of the Super FX chip.
In 1995 Nintendo released the Virtual Boy a console designed by Yokoi with stereoscopic graphics. Critics were generally disappointed with the quality of the games and red-colored graphics and complained of gameplay-induced headaches. The system sold poorly and was quietly discontinued. Amid the system's failure Yokoi formally retired from Nintendo. In February 1996 Pocket Monsters Red and Green known internationally as Pokémon Red and Blue was developed by Game Freak and released in Japan for the Game Boy establishing the popular Pokémon franchise. The game went on to sell 31.37 million units with the video game series exceeding a total of 300 million units in sales as of 2017. The Nintendo 64 was released in June 1996 in Japan September 1996 in the United States and March 1997 in Europe. Though planned for release in 1995 the production schedules of third-party developers influenced a delay. The console was in development since mid-1993 when Nintendo and Silicon Graphics announced a strategic alliance to develop the console. NEC Toshiba and Sharp also contributed technology to the console. The Nintendo 64 was marketed as one of the first consoles to be designed with 64-bit architecture. In 1997 Nintendo released the Rumble Pak a plug-in device that connects to the Nintendo 64 controller and produces vibration during certain moments of a game. By the end of its production in 2002 around 33 million Nintendo 64 consoles were sold worldwide and it is considered one of the most recognized video game systems in history. 388 games were produced for the Nintendo 64 in total some of which particularly Super Mario 64 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and GoldenEye 007 have been distinguished as some of the greatest of all time. In 1998 the Game Boy Color was released. In addition to backward compatibility with Game Boy games the console's similar capacity to the NES resulted in select adaptations of games from that library such as Super Mario Bros Deluxe. Since then over 118.6 million Game Boy and Game Boy Color consoles have been sold worldwide. A series of administrative changes occurred in 2000 when Nintendo's corporate offices were moved to the Minami-ku neighborhood in Kyoto and Nintendo Benelux was established to manage the Dutch and Belgian territories. In 2001 two new Nintendo consoles were introduced: the Game Boy Advance which was designed by Gwénaël Nicolas with stylistic departure from its predecessors and the GameCube which features a 128-bit Gekko processor from IBM and a DVD drive from Panasonic. During the first week of the Game Boy Advance's North American release in June 2001 over 500,000 units were sold making it the fastest-selling video game console in the United States at the time. By the end of its production cycle in 2010 more than 81.5 million units had been sold worldwide. As for the GameCube even with such distinguishing features as the miniDVD format of its games and Internet connectivity for a few games its sales were lower than those of its predecessors and during the six years of its production 21.7 million units were sold worldwide. The GameCube struggled against its rivals in the market and its initial poor sales led to Nintendo posting a first half fiscal year loss in 2003 for the first time since the company went public in 1962.
In 2004 Nintendo released the Nintendo DS which featured such innovations as dual screens one of which is a touchscreen and wireless connectivity for multiplayer play. Throughout its lifetime more than 154 million units were sold making it the most successful handheld console and the second bestselling console in history. In 2005 Nintendo released the Game Boy Micro the last system in the Game Boy line. Sales did not meet Nintendo's expectations with 2.5 million units being sold by 2007. In mid-2005 the Nintendo World Store was inaugurated in New York City. Nintendo's next home console was conceived in 2001 although development commenced in 2003 taking inspiration from the Nintendo DS. Nintendo also considered the relative failure of the GameCube and instead opted to take a Blue Ocean Strategy by developing a reduced performance console in contrast to the high-performance consoles of Sony and Microsoft to avoid directly competing with them. The Wii was released in November 2006 with a total of 33 launch games. With the Wii Nintendo sought to reach a broader demographic than its seventh-generation competitors with the intention of also encompassing the non-consumer sector. Nintendo invested in a $200 million advertising campaign to that end. The Wii's innovations include the Wii Remote controller equipped with an accelerometer system and infrared sensors that allow it to detect its position in a three-dimensional environment with the aid of a sensor bar. The Nunchuk peripheral includes an analog controller and an accelerometer and the Wii MotionPlus expansion increases the sensitivity of the main controller with the aid of gyroscopes. By 2016 more than 101 million Wii consoles had been sold worldwide making it the most successful console of its generation a distinction that Nintendo had not achieved since the 1990s with the Super NES. Several accessories were released for the Wii from 2007 to 2010 such as the Wii Balance Board the Wii Wheel and the WiiWare download service. In 2009 Nintendo Iberica S.A expanded its commercial operations to Portugal through a new office in Lisbon. By that year Nintendo held a 68.3% share of the worldwide handheld gaming market. After an announcement in March 2010 Nintendo released the Nintendo 3DS in 2011. The console produces stereoscopic effects without 3D glasses. By 2018 more than 69 million units had been sold worldwide; the figure increased to 75 million by the start of 2019. In 2012 and 2013 two new Nintendo game consoles were introduced: the Wii U with high-definition graphics and a GamePad controller with near-field communication technology and the Nintendo 2DS a version of the 3DS that lacks the clamshell design of Nintendo's previous handheld consoles and the stereoscopic effects of the 3DS. With 13.5 million units sold worldwide the Wii U is the least successful video game console in Nintendo's history.
In 2014 a new product line was released consisting of figures of Nintendo characters called Amiibos. On the 25th of September 2013 Nintendo announced its acquisition of a 28% stake in PUX Corporation a subsidiary of Panasonic to develop facial voice and text recognition for its video games. Due to a 30% decrease in company income between April and December 2013 Iwata announced a temporary 50% cut to his salary with other executives seeing reductions by 20%-30%. In January 2015 Nintendo ceased operations in the Brazilian market due in part to high import duties. This did not affect the rest of Nintendo's Latin American market due to an alliance with Juegos de Video Latinoamérica. Nintendo reached an agreement with NC Games for Nintendo's products to resume distribution in Brazil by 2017 and by September 2020 the Switch was released in Brazil. On the 11th of July 2015 Iwata died of bile duct cancer and after a couple of months in which Miyamoto and Takeda jointly operated the company Tatsumi Kimishima was named as Iwata's successor on the 16th of September 2015. As part of the management's restructuring Miyamoto and Takeda were named creative and technological advisors respectively. The financial losses caused by the Wii U along with Sony's intention to release their video games to other platforms such as smart TVs motivated Nintendo to rethink its strategy concerning the production and distribution of its properties. In 2015 Nintendo formalized agreements with DeNA and Universal Parks & Resorts to extend its presence to smart devices and amusement parks respectively. In March 2016 Nintendo's first mobile app for the iOS and Android systems Miitomo was released. Since then Nintendo has produced other similar apps such as Super Mario Run Fire Emblem Heroes Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Mario Kart Tour and Pokémon Go the last being developed by Niantic and having generated $115 million in revenue for Nintendo. In March 2016 the loyalty program My Nintendo replaced Club Nintendo. The NES Classic Edition was released in November 2016. The console is a version of the NES based on emulation HDMI and the Wii remote. Its successor the Super NES Classic Edition was released in September 2017. By October 2018 around ten million units of both consoles combined had been sold worldwide.
In 2017, 2024 the Wii U's successor in the eighth generation of video game consoles the Nintendo Switch was released in March 2017. The Switch features a hybrid design as a home and handheld console Joy-Con controllers that each contain an accelerometer and gyroscope and the simultaneous wireless networking of up to eight consoles. To expand its library Nintendo entered alliances with several third-party and independent developers; by February 2019 more than 1,800 Switch games had been released. The Switch has shipped over 150 million units worldwide becoming the third-best selling console of all time behind the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS. It is also Nintendo's most successful home console to date surpassing the Wii's 101.6 million units. In 2018 Shuntaro Furukawa replaced Kimishima as company president and in 2019 Doug Bowser succeeded Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé. In April 2019 Nintendo formed an alliance with Tencent to distribute the Nintendo Switch in China starting in December. In April 2020 Reuters reported that ValueAct Capital had acquired over 2.6 million shares in Nintendo stock worth over the course of a year giving them an overall stake of 2% in Nintendo. Although the COVID-19 pandemic caused delays in the production and distribution of some of Nintendo's products the situation had limited impact on business results. In May 2020 Nintendo reported a 75% increase in income compared to the previous fiscal year mainly contributed by the Nintendo Switch Online service. The year saw some changes to the company's management: outside director Naoki Mizutani retired from the board and was replaced by Asa Shinkawa; and Yoshiaki Koizumi was promoted to senior executive officer maintaining his role as deputy general manager of Nintendo EPD. By August Nintendo was named the richest company in Japan. Super Nintendo World a theme park area opened at Universal Studios Japan in 2021. Nintendo co-produced an animated film The Super Mario Bros. Movie alongside Universal Pictures and Illumination with Miyamoto and Illumination CEO Chris Meledandri acting as producers. In 2021 Furukawa indicated Nintendo's plan to create more animated projects based on their work outside the Mario film and by the 29th of June Meledandri joined the board of directors as a non-executive outside director. According to Furukawa the company's expansion toward animated production is to keep the business of producing video games thriving and growing realizing the need to create opportunities where even people who do not normally play on video game systems can come into contact with Nintendo characters. That day Miyamoto said that Meledandri really came to understand the Nintendo point of view and that asking for his input as an expert with many years of experience in Hollywood will be of great help to Nintendo's transition into film production. Later in July 2022 Nintendo acquired Dynamo Pictures a Japanese CG company founded by Hiroshi Hirokawa on the 18th of March 2011. Dynamo had worked with Nintendo on digital shorts in the 2010s including for the Pikmin series and Nintendo said that Dynamo would continue their goal of expanding into animation. Following the completion of the acquisition in October 2022 Nintendo renamed Dynamo as Nintendo Pictures. In February 2022 Nintendo announced the acquisition of SRD Co Ltd Systems Research and Development after 40 years a major contributor of Nintendo's first-party games such as Donkey Kong and The Legend of Zelda until the 1990s and then support studio since. In May 2022 Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund had purchased a 5% stake in Nintendo and by January 2023 its stake in the company had increased to 6.07%. It was raised to 7.08% by February 2023 and in the same week by 8.26% making it the biggest external investor. In November 2024 Saudi Arabia's PIF dropped back to 6.3%. Super Nintendo World opened at Universal Studios Hollywood in early 2023 followed by a Donkey Kong-themed expansion of the original land at Universal Studios Japan in 2024 and the opening of a Super Nintendo World area at Universal Epic Universe in Orlando in May 2025. The Super Mario Bros. Movie was released on the 5th of April 2023 and has grossed over $1.3 billion worldwide setting box-office records for the biggest worldwide opening weekend for an animated film the highest-grossing film based on a video game and the 15th-highest-grossing film of all-time. Nintendo reached an agreement with Embracer Group in May 2024 to acquire 100% of the shares in Shiver Entertainment a company that has specialized in porting triple-A games like Hogwarts Legacy and Mortal Kombat 1 to the Switch making it a wholly owned subsidiary of Nintendo subject to closing conditions. In October 2024 the company opened the Nintendo Museum on the site of its former Uji Ogura plant where it had manufactured playing and hanafuda cards. The same month Nintendo announced Nintendo Music a mobile application enabling one to listen to soundtracks from Nintendo games. By November 2024 Nintendo gained full ownership of Monolith Soft a first-party developer behind Xenoblade Chronicles and provided support for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
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Common questions
When was Nintendo founded and what did it originally produce?
Nintendo was founded on the 23rd of September 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi in Shimogyō-ku, Kyoto. The company initially produced handmade hanafuda playing cards for local markets.
Who designed the Game Boy and when was it released to the public?
Gunpei Yokoi and his team at Nintendo R&D1 conceived the Game Boy which was released in 1989. It became a significant success with its initial inventory of 300,000 units selling out within two weeks of sale in Japan.
What is the origin story behind the name Mario in Nintendo games?
The character Jumpman later known as Mario was named after Mario Segale who was the landlord of Nintendo's offices in Tukwila Washington. This naming occurred during the development of Donkey Kong in 1981.
Which video game console holds the record for being the best-selling home console in Nintendo history?
The Nintendo Switch is Nintendo's most successful home console to date having shipped over 150 million units worldwide. It surpassed the Wii which sold 101.6 million units and stands as the third-best selling console of all time.
When did Nintendo open its first museum and what was the site previously used for?
Nintendo opened the Nintendo Museum on the 24th of October 2024 at the site of its former Uji Ogura plant. The location had previously been used to manufacture playing cards and hanafuda cards since the company's founding.