Nintendo
is a Japanese multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes, and manufactures both video games and video game consoles.
The history of Nintendo began when craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi founded the company to produce handmade hanafuda playing cards. After venturing into various lines of business and becoming a public company, Nintendo began producing toys in the 1960s, and later video games. Nintendo developed its first arcade games in the 1970s, and distributed its first system, the Color TV-Game in 1977. The company became internationally dominant in the 1980s after the arcade release of Donkey Kong and the Nintendo Entertainment System, which launched outside of Japan alongside Super Mario Bros. in 1985.
Since then, Nintendo has produced some of the most successful consoles in the video game industry, including the Game Boy, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the Game Boy Advance, the Nintendo DS, the Wii, and the Nintendo Switch. It has created or published numerous major franchises, including Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, Super Smash Bros., Animal Crossing, Metroid, Kirby, and Star Fox. The company's mascot, Mario, is among the most famous fictional characters, and Nintendo's other characters—including Luigi, Donkey Kong, Samus, Link, Kirby, and Pikachu—have attained international recognition. Several films and a theme park area based on the company's franchises have been created.
Nintendo's game consoles have sold over 860 million units worldwide as of May 2025, for which more than 5.9 billion individual games have been sold. The company has numerous subsidiaries in Japan and worldwide, in addition to second-party developers including HAL Laboratory, Intelligent Systems, and Game Freak. It is one of the wealthiest and most valuable companies in the Japanese market.
History
Early history
1889–1932: Origin as a playing card business
Nintendo was founded as on 23 September 1889 by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi in Shimogyō-ku, Kyoto, Japan, as an unincorporated establishment, to produce and distribute Japanese playing cards, or karuta, most notably. The name "Nintendo" is commonly assumed to mean "leave luck to heaven", but the assumption lacks historical validation; it has also been suggested to mean "the temple of free ", but even descendants of Yamauchi do not know the true intended meaning of the name. Hanafuda cards had become popular after Japan banned most forms of gambling in 1882, though tolerated hanafuda. Sales of hanafuda cards were popular with the yakuza-run gaming parlors in Kyoto. Other card manufacturers had opted to leave the market, not wanting to be associated with its criminality, but Yamauchi persisted despite such fears to become the primary producer of hanafuda within a few years. With the increase of the cards' popularity, Yamauchi hired assistants to mass-produce them to satisfy the demand. Even with a favorable start, the business faced financial struggles due to operating in a niche market, the slow and expensive manufacturing process, high product price, alongside long durability of the cards, which impacted sales due to the low replacement rate. As a solution, Nintendo produced a cheaper and lower-quality line of playing cards,, while also conducting product offerings in other cities such as Osaka, where card game profits were high. In addition, local merchants were interested in the prospect of continuous renewal of decks, thus avoiding the suspicions that reusing cards would generate.According to Nintendo, the business' first western-style card deck was put on the market in 1902, although other documents indicate the date was 1907, shortly after the Russo-Japanese War. Although the cards were initially intended to be exported, they quickly gained popularity within and without Japan. During this time, the business styled itself as Marufuku Nintendo Card Co. The war created considerable difficulties for companies in the leisure sector, which were subject to new levies such as the . Nintendo subsisted and, in 1907, entered into an agreement with Nihon Senbai—later known as the Japan Tobacco—to market its cards to various cigarette stores throughout the country. A Nintendo promotional calendar from the Taishō era dated to 1915 indicates that the business was named but still used the Marufuku Nintendo Co. brand for its playing cards.
Japanese culture stipulated that for Nintendo to continue as a family business after Yamauchi's retirement, Yamauchi had to adopt his son-in-law so that he could take over the business. As a result, Sekiryo Kaneda adopted the Yamauchi surname in 1907 and headed the business in 1929. By that time, Nintendo was the largest playing card business in Japan.
1933–1968: Incorporation and expansion
In 1933, Sekiryo Kaneda established the company as a general partnership named investing in the construction of a new corporate headquarters located next to the original building, near the Toba-kaidō train station. Because Sekiryo's marriage to Yamauchi's daughter produced no male heirs, he planned to adopt his son-in-law Shikanojo Inaba, an artist in the company's employ and the father of his grandson Hiroshi, born in 1927. However, Inaba abandoned his family and the company, so Hiroshi was made Sekiryo's eventual successor.World War II negatively impacted the company as Japanese authorities prohibited the diffusion of foreign card games, and as the priorities of Japanese society shifted, its interest in recreational activities waned. During this time, Nintendo was partly supported by a financial injection from Hiroshi's wife Michiko Inaba, who came from a wealthy family. In 1947, Sekiryo founded the distribution company responsible for Nintendo's sales and marketing operations, which would eventually go on to become the present-day Nintendo Co., Ltd., in Higashikawara-cho, Imagumano, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto.
In 1950, due to Sekiryo's deteriorating health, Hiroshi Yamauchi assumed the presidency and headed manufacturing operations. His first actions involved several important changes in the operation of the company: in 1951, he changed the company name to and in the following year, he centralized the manufacturing facilities dispersed in Kyoto, which led to the expansion of the offices in Kamitakamatsu-cho, Fukuine, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto. In 1953, Nintendo became the first company to succeed in mass-producing plastic playing cards in Japan. Some of the company's employees, accustomed to more cautious and conservative leadership, viewed the new measures with concern, and the rising tension led to a call for a strike. However, the measure had no major impact, as Hiroshi resorted to the dismissal of several dissatisfied workers.
In 1959, Nintendo moved its headquarters to Kamitakamatsu-cho, Fukuine, Higashiyama-ku in Kyoto. The company entered into a partnership with Walt Disney Productions to incorporate its characters into playing cards, which opened it up to the children's market and resulted in a boost to Nintendo's playing card business. Nintendo automated the production of Japanese playing cards using backing paper, and also developed a distribution system that allowed it to offer its products in toy stores. By 1961, the company had established a Tokyo branch in Chiyoda, Tokyo, and sold more than 1.5 million card packs, holding a high market share, for which it relied on televised advertising campaigns. In 1962, Nintendo became a public company by listing stock on the second section of the Osaka Securities Exchange and the Kyoto Stock Exchange. In the following year, the company adopted its current name, and started manufacturing games in addition to playing cards.
In 1964, Nintendo earned. Although the company experienced a period of economic prosperity, the Disney cards and derived products made it dependent on the children's market. The situation was exacerbated by the falling sales of its adult-oriented playing cards caused by Japanese society gravitating toward other hobbies such as pachinko, bowling, and nightly outings. When Disney card sales began to decline, Nintendo realized that it had no real alternative to alleviate the situation. After the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Nintendo's stock price plummeted to its lowest recorded level of.
In 1965, Nintendo hired Gunpei Yokoi to maintain the assembly-line machines used to manufacture its playing cards.
1969–1972: Classic and electronic toys
Yamauchi increased Nintendo's investment in a research and development department in 1969, directed by Hiroshi Imanishi, a long-time employee of the company. Yokoi was moved to the newly created department and was responsible for coordinating various projects. Yokoi's experience in manufacturing electronic devices led Yamauchi to put him in charge of the company's games department, and his products would be mass-produced. During that period, Nintendo built a new production plant in Uji, just outside of Kyoto, and distributed classic tabletop games like chess, shogi, go, and mahjong, and other foreign games under the Nippon Game brand. The company's restructuring preserved a couple of areas dedicated to playing card manufacturing.In 1970, the company's stock listing was promoted to the first section of the Osaka Stock Exchange, and the reconstruction and enlargement of its corporate headquarters was completed. The year represented a watershed moment in Nintendo's history as it released Japan's first electronic toy—the Beam Gun, an optoelectronic pistol designed by Masayuki Uemura. In total, more than a million units were sold. Nintendo partnered with Magnavox to provide a light gun controller based on the Beam Gun design for the company's new home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, in 1971. Other popular toys released at the time included the Ultra Hand, the Ultra Machine, the Ultra Scope, and the Love Tester, all designed by Yokoi. More than 1.2 million units of Ultra Hand were sold in Japan.