Nintendo History Essay

Video games were around long before the 1980s. Programmers had been making video games for arcades as far back as the early 1960s (Kent 65). The late 1970s, however, brought video games into the home with gaming consoles. Nonetheless, these consoles remained quiet until a small

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.

Video games have been known to play a part in the childhood of many people. Although there is much debate about what video game was really made first, Spacewar!, made by Steve Russell and first premiered for the public in 1962, is one of the many games people list as the first real video game. Later, in 1972, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney teamed up to create the Atari company, which would produce coin-operated video games such as their first big hit, Pong. Little by little, gaming technology became more complex and in 1972 the Magnavox Odyssey was released by Ralph Baer as a video game console for home use. However, at that time Atari’s video game system had become one of the most successful systems on the American market, until the market

Ah, the good old NES. Still cherished today, Nintendo introduced this console in 1985, and it set the standard for all consoles to

Video games are a great pass time and relaxing getaway from everyday life, but how have the systems that play the wide verity of video games change over the years? The first video game console was called “The Brown Box”, created by Ralph H. Baer in 1962. The Brown Box was designed as a “Rectangular Brown Wooden Box with two attached controllers”. Ralph Baer was then nicknamed “The Father of Video Games”, the console only had 6 games, most notably was “Ping-Pong” also known as “Pong”.

While for years Nintendo dominated the market for virtual gaming, a rise in competition presented serious challenges for the company. After struggling for the first five years of the new millennia, Nintendo made an exceptional comeback with its innovative products, the Wii and the DS that shook the market and brought in a completely new set of customers. Their new strategy was so successful it allowed the company to become Japan’s second most valuable business after Toyota (Farhoomand, 2009).

The first games console was created in 1967 by a German engineer called Ralph Baer and his co-workers helped create the first videos game with him that would work on a standard television set. They ended up making 12 games for this console and added in a light gun. Then in 1972 after all of Baer’s team work they decided to create a new console called the Odyssey commercial video gaming console, they added cartridges into the console so you can play up to 12 games featuring dots and lines on a screen, it didn’t do so well as TV dealers didn’t see any potential in this device, this made the company think about what they can do to get their console out there to a wide audience. There was a false rumour that surfaced stating that the console only worked on TV’s that their company made which destroyed their popularity. Later after Nolan Bushnell founds Atari in 1972 the company has its first big hit when the arcade game pong was released, they started selling home versions of pong under a new label (sears tele games label). They had a new unique feature because it had a single chip that was able to produce a live score and when the paddle meets the ball a sound played. They introduced at home video games to the masses. Atari started to realise that a single games system popularity will drop if it can only produce one game at a time, so they started the idea of putting a cartridge in it so the user can play 12 games more than they were able to. They sold the company to Warner communications but they still backed up their project that they were working on, the console was renamed the Atari 2600 VCS. This console was an enormous hit with games like space invaders, breakout, missile command and

Present: When the Magnavox Odyssey became known as the first in- home gaming console, it was such a huge hit it even influenced big video game companies like Nintendo and Sega. After being influenced by this in-home gaming console, Nintendo created their own version of the gaming console the Nintendo Entertainment System also known as the NES which was originally released in Japan. Upon doing so Nintendo's rival Sega created their version known as The Sega Master System. Throughout history most of the popular gaming consoles have either come from Nintendo or Sega. Both companies had their own fair share of hit or misses when it came to games. In the 200's gamers were introduced to a new way of gaming. The company that was the first to do this

System. (NES). Although manufacturing was discontinued in 1995, Nintendo experienced enormous popularity; 50 million consoles and 350 million games were sold. 2 Nintendo was talented at offering difficult challenges for one’s hand-eye coordination, providing quality soundtracks, fast game play, and a fun and exciting plotline that makes you want to play the game again and again. 2 An example of such music is Battletoads. It’s all about some toads that like to get into fights, and there are two levels in the game in which they jump onto

The Wii U was the first system to launch of the newest generation of gaming, with its competitors, Microsoft and Sony, releasing their systems almost exactly one year later in November 2013. According to the article, “What the Hell is wrong with the Wii U?,” Kohler writes, “Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp. each sold more game consoles in 24 hours than the Wii U maker did in nine months … [Nintendo] sold just 460,000 Wii U machines in the six months ended Sept. 30, about 5 percent of its target for the fiscal year” (par. 2). When we compare the Wii U’s sales to its competitors, Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s Playstation 4, which each sold a staggering

Coleco releases the Colecovision in 1982. Nintendo, not doing well in the arcade market, licenses Donkey Kong among other games to Coleco. Colecovision's main appeal was an adapter to play Atari 2600 games. To compete with Colecovision, Atari releases its Atari 5200. It does poorly mainly because it took years to have the Atari 2600 adapter that Colecovision had all along. The very next year the Commodore 64 comes out. It is the best video game system yet and acted more like a computer. Because of this sudden flood of game consoles and software, 3rd party companies couldn't compete and went out of business. Their games became dirt cheap and soon people preferred to buy them than the expensive company's games. This all lead to a rough market.

With each new generation of game consoles along come new games that grew to be very popular.

launches in the history of Nintendo’s gaming industry since the product was also introduced in

Nintendo first started in 1889 under the leadership of Fusajiro Yamauchi, who named the company at first “Nintendo Koppai” (Jones, 2013). He started his company by selling Hanafuda Cards; these are simple cards that are used to play multiple games – much like the more common standardized 52 playing card sets (Jones, 2013). The name Nintendo originally is a Japanese metaphor and basically means “leave luck to heaven” (How Nintendo, Lego, Adidas and 17 other Major Companies Got Their Names, 2013). The Nintendo’s Corporations’ real boost in there business was their trip to the United States when Hiroshi Yamauchi, Fusajiro’s grandson, met the largest card manufacturer in the country and was stunned by their small offices (Jones, 2013). After that, he concluded that his business was limited and has a small angle and he has to think of an alternative in order to keep his place in the market (Jones, 2013). Their first innovation came by having a joint venture with Disney in order to print their characters on their cards that helped the business to jump into an entire new market that helped them in becoming global and grew to be known overseas (Jones, 2013). Moreover, with their new young audience target, Nintendo created books that explained new games that could be played with these cards (Jones, 2013). After that, the company with their new venture decided to go public in 1962 and that helped them in having other joint ventures (Jones, 2013). A sample of these

Nearly sixty years later, in 1947, the company was officially established as Marufuku Co., Ltd., and two years later Hiroshi Yamauchi became president of the company (Nintendo Co., Ltd., n.d.). In 1951, the company’s name changed to Nintendo Playing Card Co., Ltd. before finally becoming, and remaining as, Nintendo Co., Ltd. in 1963 (Nintendo Co., Ltd., n.d.). According to Sutherland (2012), after a decline in sales following the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Hiroshi Yamauchi switched the company’s focus from playing cards to games, a move that proved to be extremely beneficial. In the decades following Nintendo’s departure from playing cards, notable events include the release of its first consumer video game systems, the TV Game 15 and 6 consoles in 1977 and GAME & WATCH in 1980, its expansion into the United States in the early 1980s, and its release of the arcade game Donkey Kong (Nintendo Co., Ltd., n.d.). However, Nintendo sparked the start of its continued success in the video game industry with the