Unit 2 Assignment 1


The History of Nintendo


What originally started off as Japans biggest card manufacturer, Nintendo has dominated in various aspects of the entertainment industry throughout its existence since 1889. Nintendo was founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi as a small business that revolved around creating Hanafuda Cards and in 1953[1] when Fusajiros grandson, Hiroshi Yamauchi, overtook the company resulting in it becoming the first ever Japanese company to produce plastic cards in Japan which was the trigger for the company to start becoming more popular and initiating its start in dominating industries. However, after visiting the US in 1956 Hiroshi was forced to reconsider the long term likeliness of staying a successful card company and therefore had to broaden his and the company’s horizons. [2]


 After the development and success of the Ultra Hand, Nintendo grew intrigued by the video game industry and distributed the Magnavox Odyssey in Japan [3] before developing their own games for use in home and arcades, their second release being the ever-popular Donkey Kong. The development of the Game & Watch, an earlier design of the Game Boy,  started shortly after along with the Famicom which was only released in Japan until 1985 when Nintendo released it globally as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in order to
help with their financial struggle. The financial struggle stemmed from the 1983 Video Game Crash which resulted in a multitude of companies becoming financially impaired due to the competition video game manufactures were crating for companies creating the consoles the video games could be played on which eventually resulted in Atari not selling enough video game cartridges from their own company. 
However, Nintendo learnt from this mistake so in order to ensure that third party game creation didn't affect them the same way it did with Atari, Nintendo limited the number of outside games created for their consoles which not only stopped them from undergoing a similar downfall to Atari but also contributed to the overall profit generated, which also eventually encouraged their rivals (Sega and Microsoft) to adopt a similar approach to outside game manufacturing. [4] Nintendo has been making a fairly consistent profit since their debut and the 1983 Video Game Crash, reaching their peak during 2009 globally during the release of the first DS [5] however, Nintendo are currently undergoing a decrease in profit since the Wii U's disappointing revenue.

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