Nintendo

Nintendo Co., Ltd. 任天堂株式会社
Nintendo logo
Founded	September 23, 1889
Headquarters	11-1 Kamitoba Hokodatecho, Minami-ku, Kyoto
Type	Public
Subsidiaries	Nintendo of America Nintendo of Europe Nintendo Australia Mario Club
Industry	Video games
Website United States: Nintendo.com Japan: Nintendo.co.jp

Nintendo (Japanese: 任天堂 Nintendō) is a video game and video game console company based in Kyoto, Japan, with other divisions in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe. It is known for several popular video game franchises such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Pokémon. It was founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi producing playing cards. Its current president is Shuntaro Furukawa. The longest running and historically most influential video game console company, it is also recognized as one of (if not the) largest producer of video games and has sold more than two billion video games worldwide. Over time, Nintendo has manufactured seven home video game consoles: the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the Nintendo 64, the Nintendo GameCube, the Wii, the Wii U, the Nintendo Switch, and the Nintendo Switch 2. They have also manufactured many handheld game systems, including multiple versions of the Game Boy, the Nintendo DS, and the Nintendo 3DS.

History

Nintendo Koppai was a small Japanese business founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi, producing handmade cards for Hanafuda, a playing card game. They became popular, and soon the company was mass producing them with additional hired workers. Through the years after that, Yamauchi retired and placed his son-in-law Sekiryo Yamauchi in charge in 1929, who in turn retired in 1949, placing his grandson Hiroshi Yamauchi as president. In a highly successful move, Nintendo made a deal with Disney allowing them to use Disney characters on their cards. The company was merged and renamed several times, emerging in 1963 as Nintendo Co., Ltd.

In 1969, Nintendo established a games division, selling multiple successful toys. In 1975 Yamauchi began research into video games, back then a new American trend. Seeing the success that Atari was receiving, he decided that it was a good venture, and made a deal with Mitsubishi to create and sell video game consoles (designed to play only one game). Until 1982, they sold many consoles, including the first handheld, the highly successful Game & Watch system, as well as arcade games, such as Donkey Kong. It was also at this time that Shigeru Miyamoto, then an art designer for arcade games, joined the company.

Inspired by Atari and several other companies, Nintendo released their own multi-cartridge console, the Famicom, in Japan. It became very successful, and soon Nintendo was selling games faster than they could make them. To ease this problem, Yamauchi divided his workers into Research & Development 1, 2, and 3 in 1984 in the hopes that Nintendo would still be able to create high-quality games while working faster. In 1985, the Famicom was released worldwide under a different name, the Nintendo Entertainment System, or "NES". In this same year, the highly successful Super Mario Bros. was released as well. In 1989 Nintendo released the first Game Boy.

In 1990, the Super Famicom was released in Japan and was extremely successful, and in the next two years was released in the rest of the world as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, also known as the "Super NES" or "SNES". In the mid-1990s, Nintendo contracted with Sony to develop an add-on CD-ROM drive to the Super NES, but terminated the contract. Sony used the research and development of the canceled deal and would eventually release it as the PlayStation. In 1995, Nintendo released the Virtual Boy console, however, this provided to be a disaster for the company, their first ever. Also, competitors Sega and Sony released their new 32-bit consoles, the Saturn and the PlayStation, cutting into Nintendo's market share.

Between 1996 and 1997, Nintendo released the instantly popular Nintendo 64 console worldwide, as well as the Game Boy Pocket. In 1996, the first Pokémon games were released (as Pocket Monsters in Japan), the Red and Green Versions, which became hugely popular and spawned the mega-franchise that is known today.

In 2001 and 2002, the Game Boy Advance and the GameCube home console were released worldwide. In 2002, the long-time President of Nintendo, Hiroshi Yamauchi, stepped down from his position, handing it off to Satoru Iwata.

In early 2003, the Game Boy Advance SP was released worldwide, sporting a clamshell design.

In 2004 and 2005, the Nintendo DS was released worldwide, followed shortly after, in 2005, by the opening of Nintendo's first retail store, Nintendo World in Rockefeller Plaza in New York City. In addition, at that year's E3, Wii, then going by its codename of Revolution, was officially announced.

In late 2005, the Game Boy micro was released worldwide, which featured a smaller screen and customizable faceplates.

In 2006, the Nintendo DS Lite was released worldwide, redesigning the original DS much like the Game Boy Advance SP did to the original GBA. Also in 2006, at E3, Nintendo revealed the official name for their Project Revolution, Wii, and released it worldwide at the end of the year.

In 2008 and 2009, the Nintendo DSi was released worldwide, redesigning the DS Lite. This new iteration introduced a new OS for the system and included new downloadable software, called DSiWare.

In 2009 and 2010 Nintendo released the Nintendo DSi XL worldwide.

In 2010, Nintendo announced the Nintendo 3DS, the true successor to the original Nintendo DS, and released it in 2011 worldwide. It is able to produce 3D effects without the need for glasses using a parallax barrier screen.

In 2011, Nintendo announced the Wii U, an HD successor to the Wii, and released it in 2012 worldwide. The system's controller works as a touchscreen, similarly to the DS and 3DS. Also, the Nintendo 3DS was released near the beginning of the year.

In Summer 2012, Nintendo released a bigger version of the 3DS known as the 3DS XL worldwide.

In late 2012, Nintendo released the Wii U, successor to the Wii worldwide.

In 2014 and 2015, Nintendo released the new 3DS and new 3DS XL, upgraded versions of the 3DS worldwide.

In March 2017, Nintendo released the Nintendo Switch worldwide.

In September 2019, Nintendo released a handheld-only Switch, dubbed the Nintendo Switch Lite, worldwide.

In October 2021, Nintendo released a hardware revision of the Switch, the OLED Model worldwide.

In 2025, Nintendo will release the Nintendo Switch 2, the successor to the Nintendo Switch, worldwide.

See also

• Game Boy
• Super Nintendo Entertainment System
• Game Boy Color
• Nintendo 64
• Game Boy Advance
• Nintendo GameCube
• Nintendo DS
• Wii
• Nintendo 3DS
• Wii U
• Nintendo Switch
• Nintendo Switch 2

External links

• Nintendo on Wikipedia

NIWA

Nintendo on Super Mario Wiki Nintendo on Zelda Wiki Nintendo on WiKirby Nintendo on Metroid Wiki Nintendo on Wars Wiki Nintendo on Lylat Wiki

Nintendo on Pikipedia Nintendo on StrategyWiki Nintendo on SmashWiki Nintendo on WikiBound Nintendo on Nookipedia Nintendo on NintendoWiki Nintendo on Golden Sun Universe

Nintendo on Fire Emblem Wiki Nintendo on Starfy Wiki Nintendo on F-Zero Wiki Nintendo on Icaruspedia Nintendo on Hard Drop Tetris Wiki Nintendo on Inkipedia

Official websites

• Nintendo of America (English)
• Nintendo of Japan (Japanese)
• Nintendo of Canada (English)
• Nintendo Australia (English)
• Nintendo of Europe (English/Multi-Language)

Official social-media website accounts

• Nintendo of America on Facebook (English)
• Nintendo of Canada on Facebook (English)
• Nintendo of America on Instagram (English)
• Nintendo of America on Tumblr (English)
• Nintendo of America on Twitter (English)
• Nintendo of America on YouTube (English)

This article is part of Project Mass Media, a Bulbapedia project that aims to write comprehensive articles on official Pokémon publishing, broadcasting, communications, and other media.