Games - Nintendo

	Games - Nintendo

Nintendo (Japanese: 任天堂, ニンテンドー Nintendō; , ) is an international company originally founded in Japan on November 6, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce handmade hanafuda cards, for use in a Japanese playing card game of the same name. In the mid-twentieth century, the company tried several small niche businesses, such as a love hotel and a taxi company. Over the years, it became a video game company, growing into one of the most powerful in the industry. Aside from video games, Nintendo is also the majority owner of the Seattle Mariners, a Major League Baseball team in Seattle, Washington. Nintendo has also purchased majority ownership of Gyration Inc, a company specializing in gyros and motion sensors, for assistance in designing the controller of the Nintendo Revolution. Nintendo's main competitors on the gaming front are Sony and Microsoft.

Nintendo has the reputation of historically being the longest running company in the video game console market and the most influential and well-known console manufacturer, as well as being the dominant leader of the handheld console market. They first started making game consoles in the Japanese market in 1983, the North American market in 1985, and the European market in 1986. Over time Nintendo has manufactured five home consoles — the Famicom/NES, the Super Famicom/Super NES, the Nintendo 64, and the present GameCube and the upcoming Nintendo Revolution — and many different handheld portables, including seven versions of their popular Game Boy, the Game & Watch, the Pokémon Mini, and the Nintendo DS, as well as the ill-fated Virtual Boy. They have also published over 250 games, developing at least 180 of them, and have sold over 2,000,000,000 games worldwide.

History

1889–1968

Nintendo started as a small Japanese business by Fusajiro Yamauchi near the end of 1889 as Nintendo Koppai. The name, "Nintendo" roughly translates as "leave luck to heaven" or "in heaven's hands". Based in Kyoto, Japan, the business produced and marketed a playing card game called Hanafuda
. The cards, which were all handmade, soon began to gain popularity and Yamauchi had to hire assistants to mass produce cards to keep up.

In 1929, Yamauchi retired from the company and allowed his son-in-law, Sekiryo Yamauchi, to take over the company as president. In 1933 Sekiryo Yamauchi established a joint venture with another company and thus renamed the company Yamauchi Nintendo & Co. In 1947 Sekiryo established the company Marufuku Co. Ltd to distribute the Hanafuda cards, as well as several other brands of cards that had been introduced by Nintendo.

Hiroshi Yamauchi, the grandson of Sekiryo Yamauchi, took office as the president of Nintendo during the year of 1949. He renamed Yamauchi Nintendo & Co. Nintendo Playing Card Company, Ltd., and, in 1951 he renamed their distribution company, Marufuku Co. Ltd., to Nintendo Karuta Co. Ltd.

In 1959, Nintendo struck a deal with Disney to have them allow Nintendo to use Disney's characters on Nintendo's playing cards. The deal was a success and sold at least 600,000 cards in a single year.

Following this, in 1963, Nintendo Playing Card Company Ltd. was renamed Nintendo Co. Ltd. by Hiroshi and Nintendo began to experiment in other areas of business. During the period of time between 1963 and 1968, Nintendo founded a taxi company and a "love hotel", as well as producing toys, games and several other things (including a vacuum cleaner, Chiritory). Both the taxi company and love hotel ended in failure and were eventually closed.

1983–1989

In July 1983, Nintendo released their Famicom (Family Computer) system in Japan, which was their first attempt at a cartridge-based video game console. The system was very successful, selling over 500,000 units within two months. The console was also technically superior and inexpensive when compared to its competitors, priced at about $100 USD. However, after a few months of the consoles selling well, Nintendo received complaints that some Famicom consoles would freeze when the player attempted to play certain games. The fault was found in a malfunctioning chip and Nintendo decided to recall all Famicon units currently on store shelves, which cost them almost half a million dollars USD.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Nintendo ]

Games - Nintendo

History

1889–1968

1983–1989

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