Fusajiro Yamauchi did not set out to create the world's most famous video game company; he simply wanted to sell handmade playing cards in Kyoto. On the 23rd of September 1889, the craftsman founded Nintendo as an unincorporated establishment to produce and distribute hanafuda, a type of Japanese flower card that had become legal after the government banned most forms of gambling in 1882. While other manufacturers fled the market to avoid association with yakuza-run gaming parlors, Yamauchi persisted, turning a niche hobby into the primary producer of hanafuda within a few years. The business faced early financial struggles due to the slow manufacturing process and the high durability of the cards, which meant customers did not need to replace them often. To solve this, Yamauchi produced a cheaper line of cards called Marufuku and expanded into cities like Osaka where card game profits were high. By 1907, the company had entered an agreement with Nihon Senbai, later known as Japan Tobacco, to market its cards through cigarette stores, a move that saved the business during the Russo-Japanese War. The name Nintendo is commonly assumed to mean leave luck to heaven, but even descendants of Yamauchi do not know the true intended meaning of the name. The company survived the war and the shifting priorities of Japanese society, eventually becoming the largest playing card business in Japan under the leadership of Sekiryo Kaneda, who adopted the Yamauchi surname in 1907 to ensure the family business continued after Yamauchi's retirement.
From Toys to the Video Game Revolution
In 1965, Nintendo hired Gunpei Yokoi, a maintenance worker for the assembly-line machines used to manufacture its playing cards, and this decision would inadvertently launch the video game industry. Yokoi's experience in manufacturing electronic devices led Hiroshi Yamauchi, who had assumed the presidency in 1950, to put him in charge of the company's games department. The year 1970 marked a watershed moment when Nintendo released Japan's first electronic toy, the Beam Gun, an optoelectronic pistol designed by Masayuki Uemura that sold more than a million units. This success led to a partnership with Magnavox to provide a light gun controller for the Magnavox Odyssey, and the release of other popular toys like the Ultra Hand, which sold more than 1.2 million units in Japan. The 1973 oil crisis caused a spike in the cost of plastics and a change in consumer priorities that put essential products over pastimes, causing Nintendo to lose several billion yen and close its subsidiary Nintendo Leisure System Co., Ltd. However, the company adapted by releasing the Color TV-Game in 1977, its first home video game console, and developing arcade games like EVR Race and Wild Gunman. In 1978, Nintendo's research and development department was split into two facilities, Nintendo Research & Development 1 and Nintendo Research & Development 2, managed by Yokoi and Uemura respectively. It was during this period that Shigeru Miyamoto joined Yokoi's team with the responsibility of designing the casing for the Color TV-Game consoles, bringing distinctive sources of inspiration ranging from the natural environment of Sonobe to Westerns and detective fiction.The American Gamble That Saved a Company
In 1981, Nintendo released Donkey Kong, one of the first platform video games that allowed the player character to jump, and this title would become the financial lifeline that saved the company from a crisis. The game was a financial success for Nintendo both in Japan and overseas, leading Coleco to fight Atari for licensing rights for porting to home consoles and personal computers. The character Jumpman, who would later become Mario, was named after Mario Segale, the landlord of Nintendo's offices in Tukwila, Washington. The story of how Nintendo entered the American market is one of desperation and luck. In late 1980, Nintendo of America contracted the Seattle-based arcade sales and distribution company Far East Video, which consisted solely of experienced arcade salespeople Ron Judy and Al Stone. The company had already built a decent reputation and a distribution network, founded specifically for the independent import and sales of games from Nintendo because the Japanese company had for years been the under-represented maverick in America. Hiroshi Yamauchi appointed his son-in-law Minoru Arakawa as president, who in turn hired his own wife and Yamauchi's daughter Yoko Yamauchi as the first employee. The Arakawa family moved from Vancouver, British Columbia to select an office in Manhattan, New York, but the venture was plagued by the failure of the Radar Scope arcade game, which created a financial crisis for the company. Arakawa wagered most of Nintendo of America's modest finances on a huge order of 3,000 Radar Scope cabinets, but the game failed in the fickle market upon its arrival from its four-month boat ride from Japan. Ron Judy borrowed his aunt's life savings of $50,000 to help clear the inventory, and the company eventually relocated from Manhattan to the Seattle metro to remove major stressors. The warehouse in the Tukwila suburb was owned by Mario Segale, after whom the Mario character would be named, and it was here that the company found its salvation through the success of Donkey Kong, which sold 4,000 new arcade units each month in America.The Console Wars and the Handheld Pioneer
In 1989, Nintendo released the Game Boy, the first handheld video game console made by Nintendo, and it became one of the most successful products in the company's history. The Game Boy was bundled with the popular third-party game Tetris after a difficult negotiation process with Elektronorgtechnica, and in its first two weeks of sale in Japan, its initial inventory of 300,000 units sold out. In the United States, an additional 40,000 units were sold on the first day of distribution. The success of the Game Boy led Yamauchi to shift the company towards more electronic games in the years that followed. In 1990, Nintendo released the Super Famicom, which launched in 1990, and 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 1995, Nintendo released the Virtual Boy, a console designed by Yokoi with stereoscopic graphics, but 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, and amid the system's failure, Yokoi formally retired from Nintendo. In 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 Era of Innovation and Leadership Change
In 2002, Satoru Iwata was selected by the company as the successor to Hiroshi Yamauchi, ending the Yamauchi succession at the helm of the company, a practice that had been in place since its foundation. Iwata's appointment marked a new era of leadership, and 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 2006, Nintendo released the Wii, which sought to reach a broader demographic than its seventh-generation competitors, with the intention of also encompassing the non-consumer sector. 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. 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. In 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 its video games to other platforms such as smart TVs, motivated Nintendo to rethink its strategy concerning the production and distribution of its properties.The Hybrid Console and Global Expansion
In March 2017, the Nintendo Switch was released, featuring 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, and 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 2021, Super Nintendo World, a theme park area, opened at Universal Studios Japan, and 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. 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. In 2025, the Nintendo Switch 2 was released on the 5th of June, and it has a larger display and more internal storage than the original Switch. It has updated graphics, controllers, and social features, and on the 10th of June, Nintendo reported that the Switch 2 had sold more than 3.5 million units worldwide, becoming the fastest selling console in history, overtaking the previous record-holder, the PlayStation 2.The Business of Play and Future Horizons
As of May 2025, Nintendo's game consoles have sold over 860 million units, for which more than 5.9 billion individual games have been sold globally. The company has numerous subsidiaries in Japan and worldwide, including second-party developers such as HAL Laboratory, Intelligent Systems, and Game Freak. Nintendo's internal research and development operations are divided into three main divisions: Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development, which focuses on video game and software development, production, and supervising; Nintendo Platform Technology Development, which focuses on home and handheld video game console hardware development; and Nintendo Business Development, which focuses on refining business strategy for dedicated game system business and is responsible for overseeing the smart device arm of the business. In 2022, Nintendo acquired SRD Co., Ltd. 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 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. In 2025, Nintendo announced that it would acquire Bandai Namco Studios Singapore through a share transfer with Bandai Namco Studios starting with an 80% stake on the 1st of April 2026, followed by the rest of its stake when operations have stabilized. Following this, BNSS would rebrand to Nintendo Studios Singapore. The company has also expanded into mobile gaming, with apps such as Miitomo, 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 2025, Nintendo opened the Nintendo Museum on the site of its former Uji Ogura plant, where it had manufactured playing and hanafuda cards, and announced Nintendo Music, a mobile application enabling one to listen to soundtracks from Nintendo games.Fusajiro Yamauchi did not set out to create the world's most famous video game company; he simply wanted to sell handmade playing cards in Kyoto. On the 23rd of September 1889, the craftsman founded Nintendo as an unincorporated establishment to produce and distribute hanafuda, a type of Japanese flower card that had become legal after the government banned most forms of gambling in 1882. While other manufacturers fled the market to avoid association with yakuza-run gaming parlors, Yamauchi persisted, turning a niche hobby into the primary producer of hanafuda within a few years. The business faced early financial struggles due to the slow manufacturing process and the high durability of the cards, which meant customers did not need to replace them often. To solve this, Yamauchi produced a cheaper line of cards called Marufuku and expanded into cities like Osaka where card game profits were high. By 1907, the company had entered an agreement with Nihon Senbai, later known as Japan Tobacco, to market its cards through cigarette stores, a move that saved the business during the Russo-Japanese War. The name Nintendo is commonly assumed to mean leave luck to heaven, but even descendants of Yamauchi do not know the true intended meaning of the name. The company survived the war and the shifting priorities of Japanese society, eventually becoming the largest playing card business in Japan under the leadership of Sekiryo Kaneda, who adopted the Yamauchi surname in 1907 to ensure the family business continued after Yamauchi's retirement.
From Toys to the Video Game Revolution
In 1965, Nintendo hired Gunpei Yokoi, a maintenance worker for the assembly-line machines used to manufacture its playing cards, and this decision would inadvertently launch the video game industry. Yokoi's experience in manufacturing electronic devices led Hiroshi Yamauchi, who had assumed the presidency in 1950, to put him in charge of the company's games department. The year 1970 marked a watershed moment when Nintendo released Japan's first electronic toy, the Beam Gun, an optoelectronic pistol designed by Masayuki Uemura that sold more than a million units. This success led to a partnership with Magnavox to provide a light gun controller for the Magnavox Odyssey, and the release of other popular toys like the Ultra Hand, which sold more than 1.2 million units in Japan. The 1973 oil crisis caused a spike in the cost of plastics and a change in consumer priorities that put essential products over pastimes, causing Nintendo to lose several billion yen and close its subsidiary Nintendo Leisure System Co., Ltd. However, the company adapted by releasing the Color TV-Game in 1977, its first home video game console, and developing arcade games like EVR Race and Wild Gunman. In 1978, Nintendo's research and development department was split into two facilities, Nintendo Research & Development 1 and Nintendo Research & Development 2, managed by Yokoi and Uemura respectively. It was during this period that Shigeru Miyamoto joined Yokoi's team with the responsibility of designing the casing for the Color TV-Game consoles, bringing distinctive sources of inspiration ranging from the natural environment of Sonobe to Westerns and detective fiction.
The American Gamble That Saved a Company
In 1981, Nintendo released Donkey Kong, one of the first platform video games that allowed the player character to jump, and this title would become the financial lifeline that saved the company from a crisis. The game was a financial success for Nintendo both in Japan and overseas, leading Coleco to fight Atari for licensing rights for porting to home consoles and personal computers. The character Jumpman, who would later become Mario, was named after Mario Segale, the landlord of Nintendo's offices in Tukwila, Washington. The story of how Nintendo entered the American market is one of desperation and luck. In late 1980, Nintendo of America contracted the Seattle-based arcade sales and distribution company Far East Video, which consisted solely of experienced arcade salespeople Ron Judy and Al Stone. The company had already built a decent reputation and a distribution network, founded specifically for the independent import and sales of games from Nintendo because the Japanese company had for years been the under-represented maverick in America. Hiroshi Yamauchi appointed his son-in-law Minoru Arakawa as president, who in turn hired his own wife and Yamauchi's daughter Yoko Yamauchi as the first employee. The Arakawa family moved from Vancouver, British Columbia to select an office in Manhattan, New York, but the venture was plagued by the failure of the Radar Scope arcade game, which created a financial crisis for the company. Arakawa wagered most of Nintendo of America's modest finances on a huge order of 3,000 Radar Scope cabinets, but the game failed in the fickle market upon its arrival from its four-month boat ride from Japan. Ron Judy borrowed his aunt's life savings of $50,000 to help clear the inventory, and the company eventually relocated from Manhattan to the Seattle metro to remove major stressors. The warehouse in the Tukwila suburb was owned by Mario Segale, after whom the Mario character would be named, and it was here that the company found its salvation through the success of Donkey Kong, which sold 4,000 new arcade units each month in America.
The Console Wars and the Handheld Pioneer
In 1989, Nintendo released the Game Boy, the first handheld video game console made by Nintendo, and it became one of the most successful products in the company's history. The Game Boy was bundled with the popular third-party game Tetris after a difficult negotiation process with Elektronorgtechnica, and in its first two weeks of sale in Japan, its initial inventory of 300,000 units sold out. In the United States, an additional 40,000 units were sold on the first day of distribution. The success of the Game Boy led Yamauchi to shift the company towards more electronic games in the years that followed. In 1990, Nintendo released the Super Famicom, which launched in 1990, and 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 1995, Nintendo released the Virtual Boy, a console designed by Yokoi with stereoscopic graphics, but 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, and amid the system's failure, Yokoi formally retired from Nintendo. In 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 Era of Innovation and Leadership Change
In 2002, Satoru Iwata was selected by the company as the successor to Hiroshi Yamauchi, ending the Yamauchi succession at the helm of the company, a practice that had been in place since its foundation. Iwata's appointment marked a new era of leadership, and 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 2006, Nintendo released the Wii, which sought to reach a broader demographic than its seventh-generation competitors, with the intention of also encompassing the non-consumer sector. 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. 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. In 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 its video games to other platforms such as smart TVs, motivated Nintendo to rethink its strategy concerning the production and distribution of its properties.
The Hybrid Console and Global Expansion
In March 2017, the Nintendo Switch was released, featuring 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, and 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 2021, Super Nintendo World, a theme park area, opened at Universal Studios Japan, and 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. 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. In 2025, the Nintendo Switch 2 was released on the 5th of June, and it has a larger display and more internal storage than the original Switch. It has updated graphics, controllers, and social features, and on the 10th of June, Nintendo reported that the Switch 2 had sold more than 3.5 million units worldwide, becoming the fastest selling console in history, overtaking the previous record-holder, the PlayStation 2.
The Business of Play and Future Horizons
As of May 2025, Nintendo's game consoles have sold over 860 million units, for which more than 5.9 billion individual games have been sold globally. The company has numerous subsidiaries in Japan and worldwide, including second-party developers such as HAL Laboratory, Intelligent Systems, and Game Freak. Nintendo's internal research and development operations are divided into three main divisions: Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development, which focuses on video game and software development, production, and supervising; Nintendo Platform Technology Development, which focuses on home and handheld video game console hardware development; and Nintendo Business Development, which focuses on refining business strategy for dedicated game system business and is responsible for overseeing the smart device arm of the business. In 2022, Nintendo acquired SRD Co., Ltd. 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 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. In 2025, Nintendo announced that it would acquire Bandai Namco Studios Singapore through a share transfer with Bandai Namco Studios starting with an 80% stake on the 1st of April 2026, followed by the rest of its stake when operations have stabilized. Following this, BNSS would rebrand to Nintendo Studios Singapore. The company has also expanded into mobile gaming, with apps such as Miitomo, 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 2025, Nintendo opened the Nintendo Museum on the site of its former Uji Ogura plant, where it had manufactured playing and hanafuda cards, and announced Nintendo Music, a mobile application enabling one to listen to soundtracks from Nintendo games.