Nintendo History

Nintendo has dominated the console market with their first handheld gaming device called Gameboy, having sold over 150 million units, and continuing to create more handheld ones. Games have also become easily accessible on smart phones, following the trend of portability. According to research conducted by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), 43% of gamers play games on their smartphones, and 25% play on a wireless device. Video game consoles have drastically improved since the 1970s, having become lighter, faster, and more interactive. All of these improvements were made possible by the advancements in hardware.

The very first ‘Video Game’ was invented by Edward U. Condon in 1940, At first it was a simple game called ‘Nim’. In nim players try to avoid picking up the last match. Thousands of people played it, although the computer won at least 90% of the games. Around ten years later in 1950, a new computer program was created by Claude Shannon for the game of chess. In autumn of 1972 the first gaming console was released by ‘Magnavox’ and they called it the Odyssey. Three years later, the next big gaming console arrived when Sears sold the first ‘Atari Pong.’ This was the beginning of a long partnership between Atari and Sears. This relationship lasted multiple years, and Sears sold several successful games. Multiple years later in 1985, Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System. This new gaming console dominated the Gaming Industry and grew Nintendo’s Company. Nintendo created several gaming console legends, such as the Game Boy, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advanced, Nintendo Gamecube, Gameboy Advanced SD, and Nintendo DS, all of which made a huge impact on everybody’s childhood from 1985 to 2005. In the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century Playstation and Xbox also started releasing consoles. They are still to this day making successful Gaming Consoles, and individual games, as well as Xbox and Playstation.

Nintendo take the actions it did? How did these affect the value created by the industry?

I believe that hand held consoles such as the PS Vita and PSP (PlayStation Portable) are decreasing in popularity. In the future I do not think they will increase in popularity. This is because they are expensive considering the hardware they currently use is very limited and not many developers are making games for these platforms, for example, the vita only has four games published this year so far. However, the new Nintendo 3DS has been growing in popularity because popular game franchises like Pokémon and Super Mario keep it alive.

Even though this man has done so much more for Nintendo I will end this essay by stating that these man’s ideas have given me the idea to become a videogame designer. I used to play his games as a little kid and continue to play them even today. This man is a living legend and I hope he can create more games to

However, as the Wii’s target market is slightly different from that of either the Xbox 360 or the PS3, it is of less concern in the short-term. Nintendo’s dominance of female console gamers, however, is of serious concern. In 2008, the Wii outsold the PS3 and Xbox combined, indicating Nintendo’s strength in the market, as well as the growing eminence of female gamers as a target for game and console developers.

Nintendo started as a small Japanese business by Fusajiro Yamauchi near the end of 1889 as Nintendo Koppai. Based in Kyoto, Japan, the business produced and marketed a playing card game called Hanafuda. In 1956, Nintendo’s president Hiroshi Yamauchi began to realize the limitation of playing cards business because it was viewed as a mere tool of gambling. In order to overcome the limitation, Nintendo struck a deal with Disney in 1959 which allowed them to put Disney characters on their playing cards. This opens up new markets where both children and homemakers started purchasing playing cards.5 Due to this success; Nintendo went public in 1962 and became a listed company in Osaka Stock Exchange. Soon after, Nintendo started to venture in

Several years had passed and a Japanese company by the name of Nintendo decided it wanted to enter the market. Nintendo’s Family Computer, or Famicom, was doing well in Japan and Nintendo wanted to try and find success in North America. This proved to be difficult because America was still wary on the idea of game consoles after the crash. To try and avoid the skepticism that came with items labeled as a game console, Nintendo rebranded the Famicom as the Nintendo Entertainment System and marketed it as a toy. Believe it or not, this actually worked and Nintendo became a household name. In order to keep their success going Nintendo took steps to avoid another market crash. Nintendo would put developers under a contract that kept them on their console and would keep them from developing games for developers. Developers also had a limited amount of games they could release in a year as

When the NES came out Nintendo started a licensing company for third party games to produce their games in Nintendo factories. After the NES was created Nintendo redesigned the Famicom (the game cartridge) to look like a VHS tape to help grip the system grip it better. Also, the rarest game in NES history is the boxed version of Stadium Events, “but only a handful of boxed, complete copies have ever been seen in the wild, and they can fetch anywhere from $35,000-45,000 at auction” (www.usgamer.net). The best selling game in NES history was Super Mario Bros as it sold a total of 40 million copies (www.usgamer.net). Before the NES came along, Donkey Kong was the king of gaming. The reason for this is because arcades were the only way to play at the time. Luckily, NES games were playable in the arcades. Games like Ninja Gaiden and Super Mario Bros were stretched into the arcades by a system called Play-Choice10. In conclusion, the NES was part of a revolution in

Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have been competing for a decade with Sony dominating the market throughout most of the years because of their superior technological products. The video games industry faces an entirely new rivalry situation. In 2008, Sony lost its strong position on the market, because of Nintendo’s success with their dynamic Wii over Sony’s high-tech PlayStation 3 and Windows’ Xbox 360. Although the Wii was technologically much less advanced than PS3 and Xbox 360, the Wii's cheaper price, ease of use, innovative motion-sensitive controller, and simple but fun games, made the console a hit all demographics from 9 to 65 years old, male and female. All these factors resulted in Nintendo’s Wii dominating sales and surpassing Sony’s by an impressive ratio of 2:1.

Nintendo a company with many accolades and an history of achievements has constantly made their mark in the gaming industry. Founded by japanese businessman Fusajiro Yamauchi in 1889 known for being a small card trading company. Nintendo grew over the years with the innovation of the new gaming systems like handhelds (Gameboy) and consoles (Magnaox Odyssey) which both were really successful and helped advances gaming the process. But in 1991 Nintendo released the Super Nintendo which helped the design of the controllers; after releasing the Super Nintendo, Nintendo looked into making more advances with the gaming side of the company. By teaming up with Sony, Nintendo established a way of play CD roms on gaming consoles, which is a huge event

Both Sony and Microsoft focused their efforts on hard-core gamers and offering processing power and cutting-edge features to attract them. On the other hand, Nintendo has been trying to attract new customers that traditionally are non-gamers. The

Nintendo Company, Ltd is based in Kyoto Japan. They are recognized as being the "worldwide leader in the creation of interactive entertainment" (Nintendo, 2002, PG). Some of the world's best selling video gaming has come from the Nintendo Company, including Game Boy and Nintendo 64. In America Nintendo is based in Redmond, Washington. It is interesting to note that in American households nearly 40% have a Nintendo product.

The role of technology is vital in this industry as it focuses on technological efforts for competitive advantage. Every new development uses new technology. Though there are restricted innovations in the gaming industry, the speed of technological transfer is very high. Nintendo’s role from playing cards to toys to video games and then with each console introduced, included many technological changes. Technological up gradation increased hardware costs and discouraged innovation. The online capability of Nintendo Wii was a major change in the technology of the video game industry though they were not able to do as well as their competitors (Sony, Microsoft).

* In the past game consoles were just for playing games but today they are more than just for playing: surfing in the internet, download pictures and movies, rip music, and watch movies (e.g. Sony’s integrated Blu-ray) past: gaming ; today: gaming and home entertainment systems