2. Fusajiro Yamauchi (1889 – 1940)
Founded in 1889 to sell playing cards.
Most playing cards were illegal in Japan
They had been used for gambling
Hanafuda cards were legal, but not very popular
Mr.Yamauchi decided the problem was quality
Color printing was pretty primitive
Solved it by
hand-painting the cards
花
札
山
内
房
治
郎
4. Fusajiro Yamauchi (1889 – 1929)
When more card games became legal, was positioned to
sell them.
Stayed in
charge until
he was 70,
in 1929.
Replaced by
his son in
law Sekiryo
Kaneda
5. Sekiryo Kaneda (1929 – 1949)
Kept the company running throughWWII and the US
occupation.
Had a stroke in 1949 and died soon afterwards.
Left the company to HiroshiYamauchi, his grandson.
6. Hiroshi Yamauchi (1949 – 2002)
Born 1927.
Too young to fight in WWII, so he worked in a factory.
Inherited Nintendo when his grandfather died in 1949,
aged 21.
Dropped out of law school to manage
the business.
Wasn’t taken seriously by the workers
until he fired those who didn’t do their
jobs.
山
内
溥
7. Perception of cards
Yamauchi brought the idea to use plastic-covered cards.
The public saw cards as (illegal) gambling
Yamauchi made a licensing deal with Disney (1959) for their
characters.
Provided an instruction booklet for card games with their
cards.
Changed the perception of cards to family entertainment.
9. The limits of the card business
Yamauchi visited the United States Playing Card Company.
He saw that the world’s largest playing card company is
still pretty small.
He decided to diversify.
13. Nintendo toys
In 1966Yamauchi sawYokoi Gunpei, a maintenance
engineer, playing with a hand he created on his break.
Yamauchi realized Nintendo had an important asset: the
card distribution chain.
Instead of building a
completely new business,
diversify into toys.
MadeYokoi Gunpei a
toy designer.
15. Video games (1977-now)
In 1972 Atari was opened to sell video game systems.
Yamauchi decided to pursue this new opportunity in
1974.
In 1977, Nintendo released its first video game: ColorTV-
Game 6.
Japan-only
Huge success in Japan. Of course,
the game was primitive by our
standards.
17. Expansion to the US market
US is a bigger, richer market
First few games they tried to sell in the US failed
They got their first US hit, Donkey-Kong, in 1981
One of the first
platform games
18. Handheld games
Yokoi Gunpei saw on the train a bored businessman
playing with his calculator (1979).
Starting in 1980, Nintendo
released small handheld games
in black and white (the Game &
Watch series).
Each device could only do one
game.
Replaced by the Gameboy in 1989.
