Celebrating 125 years of entertainment - Nintendo’s history detailed
Nintendo is one of the most, if not the most, recognizable company in gaming? But did you know how its gaming empire was built? This is ABXInferno and this is “How Nintendo built its gaming empire.“
In September 1889, a man named Fusajiro Yamauchi began a playing card company called Nintendo Koppai. It was based in Kyoto, Japan and made hanafuda playing cards, a type of playing cards in Japan. The cards soon became popular and business boomed, leading to the growth of the company. He then retired in 1929 and left the company in the hands of his son-in-law Sekiryo Kaneda.
The company boomed but in 1947 he suffered a stroke and asked a relative to lead the company and drop out of university. His relative, Hiroshi Yamauchi, agreed on the condition that his older cousin had to be fired from the company. They agreed and the older Yamauchi died shortly after.
During the early days, Yamauchi did not earn much respect from other employees. To regain control over his company, he fired anyone willing to oppose him, even long-time employees, asserting his authority. His company soon became among the first to introduce Western cards into the Japanese market.
Shortly after, in 1956, Yamauchi visited the United States Playing Card Company, the biggest manufacturer in the US then, he was disappointed to learn of just how small it was and how limited card-making was. He then diversified the company into various branches, such as a taxi company, a hotel company and an instant-rice making company – which all failed and brought it to the brink of bankruptcy. One day, Yamauchi spotted an employee named Gunpei Yokoi playing with an extendable claw, something he made to amuse himself during breaks. He then ordered Yokoi to develop it into a viable product and was sold as the Ultra Hand – an instant hit. While it didn’t break any world records in sales, by then Nintendo had found a new venture – toy making.
Yokoi was then able to develop things such as the Love Tester and other novel toys that differed from other simple toys such as blocks and dolls and soon enough, the company had become a major player in the market.
In 1975, Nintendo moved into the arcade business by releasing a game known as EVR Race, designed by its first ever games designer: Genyo Takeda, who still works at the company to this day and several more titles followed, including the failed Radar Scope, which was later converted to Donkey Kong by an employee known as Shigeru Miyamoto, who not only designed DK, but also worked for Yokoi on consoles like the Color TV Game.
Donkey Kong was a massive hit and changed its fortunes along with its future dramatically. Not only did it sell so well that it prompted a lawsuit from MCA Universal (which Nintendo won), it also introduced us to Jumpman, who would later become the world-famous Mario. DK was also the company’s first product to ever be imported to the US and it was also a similarly massive hit.
During that time, the Game & Watch was also developed, marking the company’s entrance into the portable market – where wacky designs would later become actual products, like the dual-screened Oil Panic which looks quite similar to the DS, don’t you think? See here
In 1983, the company introduced the Famicom, a gaming console in Japan. He promised it would sell 1 million units in 2 years, a goal it achieved with the same amount of ease like a professional basketball player playing against someone who’s never played basketball. By 1985, his son-in-law Minoru Arakawa had begun to import the console to US under the name Nintendo Entertainment System – a console fundamental to the revival of the US gaming market after the 1983 crash.
The NES was initially rejected by retailers, so then the company created ROB, a (pointless) robot that convinced retailers and consumers it was not a console but an entertainment system – they fell for it and the rest was history. Its famous launch game – Super Mario Bros, defined platforming and games in general. They had such a large monopoly on the market that developers could only develop for their systems and had to approve every game before it was sold, both of which worked in assuring the console’s success.
In the late 80s, the company introduced both the Game Boy and Nintendo Power. The Game Boy was competing with the Atari Lynx and Sega Game Gear for handheld supremacy and despite being the only one without a color screen, it won the race. Its weaker processor and lack of a vibrant colorful display gave it a price and battery advantage, allowing it to cost less and use batteries more efficiently. One final decision that sealed its fate was instead of packaging it with Super Mario Land, Nintendo bundled it with Tetris, a game by a Russian developer, but had its rights sold to computer developer Henk Rogers, who told Nintendo that if they bundled it with Tetris, they would sell it to not just kids, but adults as well. Thanks to the bold decisions made by the development team, the Game Boy sold some 118 million units combined with its successor, the Game Boy Color.
By the end of the generation in the early 90s, Nintendo had broken several sales records, including the best-selling video game ever made, Super Mario Bros. (a title it held for over 20 years until broken by Wii Sports).
The company then introduced the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, their answer to Sega’s Genesis/Mega Drive which had initially claimed it was superior due to its 16 bits instead of the NES’s 8. The SNES was in every way superior compared to the NES and also one-upped the Genesis by having more buttons, better performance and later on support for 3D games. Despite this, the SNES and Genesis both sold very well and Nintendo had lost its monopoly on the market. But during this time, Nintendo angered Sony by breaking a deal they struck on the SNES CD, which never came out, but caused Sony to create their own system.
While its other competitors had flocked to 32-bit CD-based systems, Nintendo went the other way and doubled the bits to 64-bits but stuck with cartridges to improve load times. The product was developed as the Ultra 64 alongside the disastrous Virtual Boy, a virtual 3D console that failed so hard and is so cringe-worth the company would rather forget it. Meanwhile, the Ultra 64 was later released as just the Nintendo 64 in 1996 and sold well, though it had lost to the PlayStation in the sales department, it had several ground-breaking games such as the first full 3D game Super Mario 64 and critical darling Zelda: Ocarina of Time. There was one area where Yamauchi had tried to do something good, but backfired – he had intentionally ordered it to be hard to program so it would scare off bad developers, but instead we got turds like Superman 64.
In 1998, Nintendo launched Pokémon Red and Blue in the US. We all know how that turned out - it was a massive international success, not only did it sell well, it spawned trading cards, movies, animes, comics and more! Despite being launched on the aging Game Boy which was already just less than 2 months away from being replaced by the Color model, it became the best-selling RPG of all time.
By 2001, Nintendo needed a new console to replace the N64, so in November that year the company launched the GameCube – a cube-shaped console using Mini Discs and unlike the PS2, did not play DVDs. It however, used CAV (constant angular velocity, or the discs always spinning at the same rate) to improve loading. There was one last saving grace for the GameCube – it was darn cheap. It launched at just $149, radically cheaper due to Yamauchi’s thinking that game consoles shouldn’t be expensive. Despite its incredible lineup of games like Smash Bros. Melee, Zelda Wind Waker and Metroid Prime, the console never really took off – selling just 21 million units, behind the Xbox’s 24 and far behind the PS2’s 155 million.
In 2004, Nintendo was being hit by a wave of criticism - industry analysts called the company "uninnovative”. So at E3 that year, the company showed off the dual-screen DS, the bottom one being touch-compatible. Furthermore, the company announced it would be launching later that year. Despite being introduced as a third pillar which meant it was never designed to replace either the GameCube or the Game Boy Advance, the DS’s sales skyrocketed, mainly thanks to its unique concept and its backward-compatibility with GBA games. It quickly became Nintendo’s flagship handheld and the DS replaced the Game Boy completely about a year after it was introduced. With games like New Super Mario Bros, Kirby Canvas Curse, Mario Kart DS and two Zelda titles, the DS quickly became Nintendo’s best-selling console of all time, the best-selling handheld and the second best-selling video game console ever.
The DS didn’t just teach Nintendo that power no longer meant anything in a hugely competitive market, it taught Nintendo that games and the experience itself meant everything. It gave Nintendo the necessary confidence to launch another console with a unique control method. While the DS had a touch screen and two screens, the Wii had motion controls. Announced as the Nintendo Revolution in 2004, its final name was announced a few months before E3 2006, wisely letting the public know about it so that its E3 2006 event wouldn’t be overshadowed by the slightly ridiculous name. It launched in November 2006 along with the PS3 and quickly became an overnight success. It quickly went out of stock at many retailers and was in short supply for most of 2007. Games like Super Mario Galaxy, Smash Bros. Brawl and launch title Zelda Twilight Princess (a first for the series) kept the sales counter ticking.
Both the Wii and DS became the best-selling consoles of their generation, but a shock was in for Nintendo for their next two consoles.
In 2010, rumors were swirling that Nintendo was about to unveil another new console. In March of that year, the Japanese firm announced the 3DS. The company didn’t for E3 for it feared that it would have been leaked early if it hadn’t announced it first, tarnishing the company’s reputation of being a data tap that rarely leaked any data. At E3, it took its time to show some new games but it was severely underwhelming. It launched less than a year later with Pilotwings Resort and some other games as launch titles. While it was received warmly, it was never quite the sales smash that its predecessor was at launch, so in July Nintendo slashed it price down to $169 from the original $249, gave away 20 free VC games, 10 NES and 10 GBA (most of which have never been available to the public, in fact, the 3DS eShop hasn’t had GBA VC ever) to anyone who’d already bought one and released a ton of triple A titles that holiday - Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7 and more. It was a massive success - today the 3DS is just as much a sales king as it predecessor was, topping the sales charts in Japan almost every single week, beating the PS4 and Vita more than 95% of the time. It also is a top contender in the U.S. market, though the PS4 and Xbox One enjoy slightly more success.
That same year, at E3 2011, Nintendo showed off its “Project Cafe” console off to the public for the first time. Gamers got a glimpse of the Wii sequel, with its iPad-esque controller, an HD Zelda tech demo and Mario in HD as “New Super Mario Bros. Mii. But its reveal was fraught with issues - mainly, the console’s confusing naming as Wii U made almost everyone confused about whether it was a Wii replacement or a controller add-on, the consoles’ similar designs certainly didn’t help. The Wii U ultimately launched in November the following year, giving gamers the Nintendo experience, in HD for the first time ever. But despite a successful first quarter on the market with 3.06 million units sold, numbers quickly dipped in January 2013 when the company, already losing money, sold only 52 000 units in the U.S. The Wii U had a poor second quarter on the market - just several weeks before its launch, the premier Wii U exclusive Rayman Legends, set to launch in February, was delayed to September and ported to the PS3 and 360, leaving LEGO City: Undercover as the biggest title for the quarter. As good as a game that was, it’s just not a game that sells consoles.
Q2 2013 proved to be even more troubling, selling just over 160 000 units in 3 months. At E3 though, along with a Nintendo Direct earlier that year in January, the company announced a slew of games headed our way - Super Mario 3D World, a new Mario Kart, confirmation for a new Zelda, a new DK game, a Yoshi game and more. A price cut the following quarter, bringing the $349 32GB deluxe model down to $299 and showing the basic $299 model with a paltry 8GB of storage the door. The third quarter of 2013 proved to still be a rather poor one, but sales had doubled since Q2, moving 300 000 units and with the holiday season underway, despite the launch of the PS4 and Xbox One, the company sold just a smidge under 2 million, proving to be the best quarter the console had since its launch. Zelda: The Wind Waker HD, Wii Party U and Super Mario 3D World were ultimately all system-sellers.
Today, the Wii U proves that miracles do happen - it has sold just over 7.5 million since launch and while it might never sell as many as the Wii or DS sold, it’s doing fairly well in a very competitive market. Hyrule Warriors and Smash seem to be more system-sellers and with a slew of games like Zelda, Kirby and Splatoon launching next year, the future looks bright for a system that had just a tiny gleam of hope in 2013.