Nintendo

History

Nintendo's origins trace back to September 23, 1889, when Fusajiro Yamauchi founded a small workshop in Shimogyo Ward, Kyoto, to manufacture hanafuda — traditional Japanese flower cards used in gambling games. The company was named Nintendo Koppai. Following the prohibition of many gambling formats in Japan in 1882, hanafuda remained legal, and demand for the cards was steady enough to sustain a modest craftsman operation. Yamauchi built his reputation on high-quality handmade cards, selling them to teahouses and through distributors across the Kansai region. By the early twentieth century the business had grown sufficiently to warrant expansion beyond its founding product.

In 1902 Nintendo Koppai became the first Japanese company to manufacture Western-style playing cards, opening a new commercial channel at a time when card games of European origin were gaining popularity in Japan. The move demonstrated the organizational flexibility that would later become a hallmark of the company. Fusajiro Yamauchi retired in 1929, and leadership passed to his son-in-law Sekiryo Kaneda — who subsequently took the Yamauchi surname — making him the second-generation president. A distribution subsidiary, Marufuku Co., Ltd., was established in 1947. In 1948 and 1949 Sekiryo Yamauchi suffered a stroke and was forced to retire; his grandson Hiroshi Yamauchi, then twenty-one years old and still enrolled at Waseda University, was recalled from his studies to inherit the company. On April 25, 1949, Hiroshi Yamauchi became the third president of Nintendo.

Under Hiroshi Yamauchi the company was renamed Nintendo Playing Card Co., Ltd. in 1951, and in 1953 it became the first Japanese manufacturer to produce plastic playing cards at scale, sharply reducing production costs and broadening the consumer market. In 1963 the company adopted its current name, Nintendo Co., Ltd., and began diversifying into toys. Two years later, in 1965, Gunpei Yokoi joined the company in a maintenance role on the playing-card production line. Yokoi's inventive curiosity attracted Yamauchi's attention; encouraged to develop products, he created the Ultra Hand in 1966, an extendable mechanical arm toy that sold in large numbers and prompted Nintendo to expand its Uji manufacturing facility in 1968. The Love Tester followed in 1969, performing well in both domestic and export markets and opening Nintendo's first sustained international sales channels.

Nintendo entered the electronic game hardware business in June 1977 with the Color TV-Game 6, a Pong-style home console produced in a joint venture with Mitsubishi Electric and incorporating a license from Magnavox. The Color TV-Game 15 followed in the same year; the two variants together sold more than three million units. It was for this product line that a young industrial design graduate named Shigeru Miyamoto, who had joined the company in 1977 as an apprentice in the planning department, received his first significant assignment: designing the casings for the Color TV-Game series. In April 1980 Nintendo of America was incorporated in New York City, with Minoru Arakawa — son-in-law of Hiroshi Yamauchi — serving as its first president. Later that same month, on April 28, 1980, Nintendo launched the Game & Watch, a series of handheld LCD games designed by Yokoi; the Ball unit was the first title, and the series ultimately sold approximately 43.4 million units across its run.

The Family Computer, known outside Japan as the Nintendo Entertainment System, was released in Japan on July 15, 1983, at a price of ¥14,800. It arrived in North American test markets in New York on October 18, 1985, with full national rollout during 1986 — sources differ on whether the nationwide launch was completed in February or September of that year. The NES revitalized a retail video game market that had contracted sharply in North America following the industry crash of 1983. The Famicom Disk System launched in Japan on February 21, 1986, alongside The Legend of Zelda. Combined worldwide sales of the Famicom and NES reached 61.91 million units. The Game Boy, designed by Yokoi and Satoru Okada, was released in Japan on April 21, 1989, and together with the Game Boy Color it accumulated 118.69 million units sold globally.

The Super Famicom launched in Japan on November 21, 1990 at ¥25,000, with its initial print of 300,000 units selling out within hours; it reached North America as the Super NES between August and September 1991. The Virtual Boy, developed by Yokoi's Research & Development 1 division, launched in Japan on July 21, 1995, but sold only approximately 770,000 units before being discontinued. Gunpei Yokoi left Nintendo in August 1996 after thirty-one years with the company; Nintendo's official position does not attribute his departure to the Virtual Boy's commercial failure. Yokoi died on October 4, 1997, in a traffic accident on the Hokuriku Expressway at the age of fifty-six. NINTENDO 64 launched in Japan on June 21, 1996, with its initial 300,000 units selling out immediately; cumulative sales reached 32.92 million units.

In May 2002 Hiroshi Yamauchi retired after fifty-three years as president, and Satoru Iwata became the fourth president — the first from outside the Yamauchi family. Under Iwata, Nintendo pursued what it called 'blue ocean' strategy: designing hardware and software for players who did not consider themselves gamers. The Nintendo DS launched in North America on November 21, 2004 — Nintendo's first hardware debut outside Japan — followed by Japan on December 2; cumulative sales reached 154 million units. The Wii launched in North America on November 19, 2006, selling 101.63 million units lifetime. The Nintendo 3DS (2011), Wii U (2012), and Nintendo Switch (2017) followed. The 3DS was reduced from $249.99 to $169.99 within six months of launch. The Wii U sold 13.56 million units, the lowest figure for any Nintendo home console. Iwata died on July 11, 2015, from a bile duct tumor at the age of fifty-five.

The Nintendo Switch, released simultaneously worldwide on March 3, 2017, became the fastest-selling console in Nintendo's history to that point, accumulating 150.86 million units as of December 31, 2024. Shuntaro Furukawa became the sixth president in June 2018. Nintendo Switch 2 launched globally on June 5, 2025, selling 3.5 million units in its first four days — the fastest opening for any Nintendo hardware — and reaching 17.37 million units by the end of December 2025. Hiroshi Yamauchi died on September 19, 2013, at the age of eighty-five. The company that began manufacturing flower cards in a Kyoto workshop in 1889 had, over the course of 136 years, become one of the defining creative forces in global interactive entertainment, with cumulative hardware sales spanning from playing cards to platforms that connected hundreds of millions of players worldwide.