GAMES COMPANY
MAY 9, 2021
the long history of nintendo
The long history of Nintendo shows us how hard work and passion have turned the company into one of the biggest in gaming industry.
Nintendo is one of the biggest names in video games. They are responsible for creating many gamers around the world that light up the industry.
Nintendo was founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi in Kyoto, Japan on September 23, 1889 as Nintendo Koppai. Their first business was trading cards, the handmade Hanfuda cards. The name “Nintendo” means “leave the luck to heaven” in common assumption.
Following common Japanese tradition, in 1929 Fusajiro Yamauchi retired from the company and allowed Sekiryo Yamauchi – his adopted son-in-law, to take over the company as the President of Nintendo company. Then Sekiryo Yamauchi adopted Shikanojo Yamuchi to lead the company in 1947, but he never became the president because he left his family. So his son, Hiroshi was appointed to take over the company by his grandparents instead of his father.
In 1951, Nintendo released a new playing card game called Hanafuda. and became popular in a short time. Nintendo even had other business during 1950’s to 1970’s including chain of hotels and a Taxi company named Daiya.
They entered the Japanese Toy Market with the Ultra Hand in 1966. It was a popular business for Nintendo but once again they faced issues with manufacturing which forced them to change direction again.
When electronic video games became a big thing in 1970’s, Nintendo entered the scene by acquiring the distributing rights of the Magnavox Odyssey game console in Japan. They went further by creating Color TV-Game consoles which one of the designer team members was Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario in the future.
In early 1980’s Nintendo introduced the most popular portable hand held game console, the Game & Watch series. This console was so popular that many kids at the time brought along the gadgets everywhere they go.
The Game & Watch line was produced from 1980 to 1991. Created by game designer Gunpei Yokoi, Game & Watch was the earliest Nintendo video game product to achieve major success with 43,4 million units sold worldwide. Many titles released for this console including Mario Bros, Octopus, Parachute, Greenhouse and Helmet.
Followed by the big hit of Game & Watch, Nintendo released the Famicom (Family Computer) or the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES. Released in July 1983 in Japan and 1985 in North America, the Nintendo Entertainment System was a big success with the most popular title : Super Mario Bros. This console had direct competition with Atari game consoles and other brands during the 80’s decade.
Nintendo released the Game Boy console in 1989 as the successor of Game & Watch system. The Game Boy line sold extremely well with an amazing number of 118 million globally. Both devices were created by Gunpei Yokoi.
In 1991, Nintendo had an important deal with Sony to develop a CD-ROM attachment for the SNES/Super Famicom console. This project was called Nintendo PlayStation CD ROM add-on and SNES/SFC standalone console. But at the last minute Nintendo decided to pull out of the partnership and instead went along with Phillips.
This made Sony so furious and continue to develop their video games console on their own using the technology they had. The video games console name is Sony PlayStation.
Over the years the exact reason of Nintendo left the partnership with Sony has been the subject of speculations, but the most common theory is the profit sharing for the machine that didn’t look good for Nintendo.
The long history of Nintendo continues on. From 1990’s to present the successor game consoles of NES were released by Nintendo, such as Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Gamecube, Wii and Wii U. In terms of monetary value, Nintendo is now the most successful video game company in the world today. Nintendo is worth 22.2 Billion dollars as of May 2015.
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