is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel.
Nintendo soon developed into
a video game company, becoming one of the
most influential in the industry
and Japan
's third most
valuable listed company, with a market value of over US$85 billion.Nintendo is the
fifth largest software company in the world.
Besides video games,
Nintendo is also the majority owner of the Seattle Mariners, a Major League Baseball team in Seattle, Washington
.
According to Nintendo's
Touch!
Generations website, the name
"Nintendo" translated from Japanese to English means "Leave luck to
Heaven". As of October 2, 2008, Nintendo has sold over 470 million
hardware units and 2.7 billion software units.
History
Former headquarters plate, from when
Nintendo was solely a playing card company
As a card company (since 1889)
Nintendo was founded as a card company in late 1889, originally
named "Nintendo Koppai". Based in Kyoto, Japan, the business
produced and marketed a
playing card
game called
Hanafuda. The handmade cards
soon became popular, and Yamauchi hired assistants to mass produce
cards to satisfy demand. Nintendo continues to manufacture playing
cards in Japan and organizes its own
contract bridge tournament called the
"Nintendo Cup".
New ventures (1956–1975)
In 1956, Hiroshi Yamauchi (the grandson of Fusajiro Yamauchi)
visited the U.S. to talk with the
United States Playing Card
Company, the dominant playing card manufacturer in that
country. He found that the world's biggest company in his business
was only using a small office. This was a turning point, where
Yamauchi realized the limitations of the playing card business. He
then gained access to Disney's characters and put them on the
playing cards to drive sales.
The Nintendo Love Tester
In 1963, Yamauchi renamed
Nintendo Playing Card Company
Limited to
Nintendo Company, Limited. The company
then began to experiment in other areas of business using the newly
injected capital. During this period of time between 1963 and 1968,
Nintendo set up a
taxi company, a "
love hotel" chain, a TV network and a food
company (trying to sell
instant rice,
similar to
instant noodles). All
these ventures eventually failed, and after the 1964
Tokyo Olympics, playing card sales
dropped, leaving Nintendo with 60 yen in stocks.
In 1966, Nintendo moved into the Japanese toy industry with the
Ultra Hand, an extending arm developed by
its maintenance engineer
Gunpei Yokoi
in his free time. Yokoi was moved from maintenance to the new
"Nintendo Games" department as a product developer. Nintendo
continued to produce popular toys, including the Ultra Machine,
Love Tester and the Kousenjuu series of light gun games. Despite
some successful products, Nintendo struggled to meet the fast
development and manufacturing turnaround required of the toy
market, and fell behind the well-established companies such as
Bandai and
Tomy.
In 1973, the focus shifted to family entertainment venues with the
Laser Clay Shooting
System, using the same light gun technology used in Nintendo's
Kousenjuu series of toys, and set up in abandoned bowling alleys.
Following some success, Nintendo developed several more light gun
machines for the emerging arcade scene. While the Laser Clay
Shooting System ranges had to be shut down following excessive
costs, Nintendo had found a new market.
Electronic era (since 1975)
In 1974, Nintendo secured the rights to distribute the
Magnavox Odyssey home
video game console in Japan. In 1977,
Nintendo began producing its own
Color TV
Game home video game consoles. Four versions of these consoles
were produced, each playing variations on a single game (for
example, Color TV Game 6 featured six versions of
Light
Tennis).
A student product developer named
Shigeru Miyamoto was hired by Nintendo at
this time. He worked for Yokoi, and one of his first tasks was to
design the casing for several of the Color TV Game consoles.
Miyamoto went on to create some of Nintendo's most famous video
games and become one of the most recognizable faces in the video
game industry.
In 1975, Nintendo moved into the video
arcade game industry with
EVR Race, designed by their first game
designer,
Genyo Takeda , and several
more titles followed. Nintendo had some small success with this
venture, but the release of
Donkey Kong in 1981, designed
by Miyamoto, changed Nintendo's fortunes dramatically. The success
of the game and many licensing opportunities (such as ports on the
Atari 2600,
Intellivision and
ColecoVision) gave Nintendo a huge boost in
profit.
In 1980, Nintendo launched
Game
& Watch, a
handheld
video game series developed by Yokoi, to worldwide success. In
1983, Nintendo launched the Family Computer (commonly called by its
shortened name "Famicom") home video game console in Japan
alongside ports of its most popular arcade titles. In 1985, the
console launched in North America as the
Nintendo Entertainment System,
and was accompanied by
Super Mario
Bros.. In 1989, Yokoi developed the
Game Boy handheld video game console. Nintendo is
the longest-surviving video game console manufacturer to
date.
The Nintendo Entertainment System was superseded by the Super
Famicom, known outside Japan as the
Super Nintendo Entertainment
System (SNES). This was Nintendo's console of the 16-bit
4
th generation, and its main rival was the
Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. A fierce
console war ensued, where the SNES was
victorious.The SNES eventually sold 49.10 million consoles, around
20 million more than the Mega Drive.The
Nintendo 64, most notable for its
3D graphics capabilities, introduced
the
analog stick and built-in
multiplayer for up to four players,
instead of two. It also introduced the
Rumble
Pak, an enhancement that produced
force feedback, which was the first such
device in the history of home console gaming, and has become an
industry standard.
The
Nintendo GameCube followed,
and was the first Nintendo console to use
optical disc storage instead of
cartridge. The most recent home console, the
Wii, uses motion sensing controllers and has
online functionality (although the GameCube did also have some
basic online capabilities), used for services such as
Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection,
Virtual Console and
WiiWare.
Handheld console history
After the
Game & Watch, the handheld development
continued with the
Game Boy, the
Game Boy Pocket and
Game Boy Color, each differing in minor
aspects. The Game Boy, the best-selling handheld and second
best-selling console of all time, continued for more than a decade
until the release of the
Game Boy
Advance, featuring technical specifications similar to the
SNES. The
Game Boy Advance SP, a
frontlit, flip-screen version, introduced
a rechargeable, built-in battery, instead of using AA batteries
like its predecessors. The
Game Boy
Micro was released in 2005, after the Nintendo DS's release,
but did not sell as well as its predecessors.
The most recent Nintendo handheld console is the
Nintendo DSi.On November 1, 2008, Nintendo
released, in Japan, the Nintendo DSi, an improved version featuring
larger screens, improved sound quality, an AAC music player and two
cameras—one on the outside and one facing the user.[21]. It was
released in the USA, Europe, and Australia at the start of April,
2009.
The
Nintendo DS Lite, a remake of
the DS, improved several features of the original model, including
the battery life and screen brightness. It was designed to be
sleeker, more beautiful, and more aesthetically pleasing than the
original, in order to appeal to a broader audience. On November 1,
2008, Nintendo released, in Japan, the
Nintendo DSi, an improved version featuring
larger screens, improved sound quality, an
AAC music player and two cameras—one
on the outside and one facing the user.. It was released in the
USA, Europe, and Australia at the start of April, 2009.
Offices and locations
Nintendo
Company, Limited (NCL) is based in Minami-ku, Kyoto
, Kyoto
Prefecture
, Japan (
). Its pre-2000 office, now its research and
development building, is located in Higashiyama-ku,
Kyoto
, Kyoto
Prefecture, Japan (
). Its original Kyoto headquarters can still be found at (
).
Nintendo of America, Incorporated (NOA), its
American division, is based in Redmond, Washington
. It has distribution centers in Atlanta, Georgia
(Nintendo Atlanta) and North Bend,
Washington
(Nintendo North
Bend).Nintendo of Canada, Limited (NOCL) is based
in the Richmond,
BC
, with its distribution center in Toronto, Ontario
.Nintendo
Australia Pty Ltd (NAL) is based in Melbourne, Victoria
. It handles the distribution, sales and
marketing of Nintendo products in Australia and New Zealand. It
also manufactures some of the Wii games locally.
Nintendo of Europe is
based in Großostheim
(established in 1990), Germany. iQue, Ltd., a Chinese joint
venture between its founder, Doctor Wei
Yen, and Nintendo, manufactures and distributes official
Nintendo consoles and games for the mainland Chinese market, under
the iQue brand. Nintendo also established Nintendo of Korea
(NoK) on July 7, 2006.
Policy
Emulation
Nintendo is known for a "no tolerance" stance against
emulation of its video games and
consoles, stating that it is the single largest threat to the
intellectual rights of video game developers.It claims that
copyright-like rights in
mask works
protect its games from the exceptions that
United States copyright law
otherwise provides for
backup copies.
Nintendo uses the claim that emulators running on
personal computers have no use other than
to play
pirated video
games, contested by some who say these emulators have been used
to develop and test independently produced
"homebrew" software on Nintendo's
platforms, and that Nintendo's claims contradict copyright laws,
mainly that
ROM image copiers are illegal
(they actually are legal if used to dump unprotected ROM images on
to a user's computer for personal use, per (a)(1) and foreign
counterparts) and that emulators are illegal (if they do not use
copyrighted BIOS, or use
other
methods to run the game, they are legal ). This stance is
largely apocryphal, however; Nintendo remains the only modern
console manufacturer which has not sued an emulator manufacturer
(the most public example being Sony vs.
the bleem
company).
Emulators have been used by Nintendo and licensed third party
companies as a means to re-release older games.
Content guidelines
For many years, Nintendo had a policy of strict content guidelines
for video games published on its consoles. Although Nintendo Japan
allowed
graphic violence in its
video games,
nudity and
sexuality were strictly prohibited. Former Nintendo president
Hiroshi Yamauchi believed that if
the company allowed the licensing of
pornographic games, the company's image would be
forever tarnished. Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe went
further in that games released for Nintendo consoles could not
feature nudity, sexuality,
profanity
(including racism, sexism or slurs), blood, graphic or
domestic violence,
drugs, political messages or
religious symbol (with the exception of
widely unpracticed religions, such as the
Greek Pantheon). The Japanese parent company
was concerned that it may be viewed as a "Japanese Invasion" if it
introduced adult content to North American and European children.
U.S. Senator Joe
Lieberman praised this
zero
tolerance policy, but others criticized the policy, claiming
that gamers should be allowed to choose the content they want to
see. Despite the strict guidelines, some exceptions have occurred:
Bionic
Commando,
Smash TV and
Golgo 13: Top Secret
Episode contained blood and violence, the latter also
contained implied sexuality and tobacco use;
River City Ransom and
Taboo: The Sixth Sense contained
nudity, and the latter also contained religious images, as did
The Legend of
Zelda,
Zelda II: The Adventure of
Link,
Castlevania II, and
III.
A known side effect of this policy was the
Sega Genesis version of
Mortal Kombat selling over
double the number of Nintendo's Super NES version, mainly because
Nintendo had forced publisher
Acclaim to recolor the red blood to
look like white sweat and replace some of the more gory attacks in
its release of the game. By
contrast, Sega allowed blood and gore to remain in the Genesis
version (though the Genesis version of the game required a code to
unlock the gore). Nintendo allowed the Super NES version of
Mortal Kombat II to ship
uncensored the following year with a content warning on the
packaging.
In 1994, when the
ESRB and in 2003, the
PEGI video game
ratings systems were introduced, Nintendo chose to abolish most of
these policies in favor of consumers making their own choices about
the content of the games they played. Today, changes to the content
of games are done primarily by the game's developer or,
occasionally, at the request of Nintendo. The only clear-set rule
is that ESRB AO-rated games will not be licensed on Nintendo
consoles in North America, a practice which is also enforced by
Sony and
Microsoft. Nintendo has since allowed several
mature-content games to be published on its consoles, including:
Perfect Dark,
Conker's Bad Fur Day,
Doom and
Doom
64,
BMX XXX, the
Resident Evil series,
killer7,
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's
Requiem,
BloodRayne,
Geist and
Dementium: The Ward. Certain games
have continued to be modified, however. For example,
Konami was forced to remove all references to
cigarettes in the 2000
Game Boy Color
game
Metal Gear
Solid (although the previous NES version of
Metal Gear and the subsequent Gamecube game
Metal Gear Solid:
The Twin Snakes both included cigarettes, as did Wii title
MadWorld), and maiming and blood
were removed from the Nintendo 64
port of
Cruis'n USA. Another example is in
the Game Boy Advance game
Mega Man
Zero 3, in which one of the bosses, Hellbat Schilt in the
Japanese and European releases, was renamed Devilbat Schilt in the
U.S. localization. In the U.S. releases of the
Mega Man Zero games, enemies and bosses
killed with a saber attack would not gush blood as they do in the
Japanese versions. However, the release of the Wii has ensued in a
number of even more controversial, mature titles, such as
Manhunt 2,
No More Heroes,
The House of the
Dead: Overkill and
MadWorld, the latter three of which are
published exclusively for the console. The Nintendo DS also has its
own violent games, such as
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown
Wars,
Dementium: The
Ward and
Resident Evil: Deadly
Silence.
License guidelines
Nintendo of America also had guidelines in 1993 for its licensees
for them to make games for the
Nintendo Entertainment System,
in addition to the above content guidelines:
- Licensees were not permitted to release the same game for a
competing console until two years had passed.
- Nintendo would decide how many cartridges would be supplied to
the licensee.
- Nintendo would decide how much space would be dedicated for
articles, advertising, etc. in Nintendo Power.
- There was a minimum number of cartridges which had to be
ordered by the licensee from Nintendo.
- There was a yearly limit of five games that a licensee may
produce for a Nintendo console. This rule was made due to caution
of over saturation which caused the North American video
game crash of 1983.
Konami wanted to produce more games for Nintendo consoles, yet the
last rule restricted them. As a result, Konami formed both
Ultra Games and, later,
Palcom to produce more games. This disadvantaged
smaller or beginning companies, as they could not form additional
companies at will. Also, Square (now
Square
Enix) executives have suggested that the price of publishing
games on the
Nintendo 64 along with the
degree of censorship and control that Nintendo enforced over its
games—most notably
Final Fantasy
VI—were factors in moving its games to
Sony's
PlayStation console.
Seal of Quality
The
Nintendo Seal of Quality (currently
Official Nintendo Seal in NTSC regions) is a gold
seal first used by
Nintendo of
America, and later Nintendo of Europe, displayed on any game
licensed for use on one of its
video
game consoles, denoting the game has been properly licensed by
Nintendo (and, in theory, checked for quality). It is a golden
starburst with the text "Original Nintendo Seal of Quality" or
"Official Nintendo Seal". The starburst is circular in
PAL regions, such as
Europe
and
Australia, and elliptical for
NTSC regions.
Gamers understandably were wary of game makers when the
Nintendo Entertainment System
came out in 1985. The
10NES lockout chip
solved the problem of controlling access to the console, but there
was the issue of customer confidence. Publishers were also
encouraged to create high-quality titles in other ways. Each
publisher was only allowed five releases per year (with certain
exceptions),
Originally, for NTSC countries, the seal was a large, black and
gold circular starburst. The seal read as follows: "This seal is
your assurance that NINTENDO has approved and guaranteed the
quality of this product." This seal was later altered in 1988;
"approved and guaranteed" was changed to "evaluated and approved".
In 1989, the seal became gold and white, like it currently appears,
with a shortened phrase, "Official Nintendo Seal of Quality". It
was changed in 2003 to read "Official Nintendo Seal" rather than
"Official Nintendo Seal of Quality". Currently, the seal makes no
guarantee of quality software, instead referring to the fact that
the item is published or licensed by Nintendo.
See also
Notes
- Reuters: Nintendo sets $85 bln high score, thanks
to Wii, Nintendo DS
- [1]
- Touch! Generations
- Kent , p. 431. "Sonic was an
immediate hit, and many consumers who had been loyally waiting for
Super NES to arrive now decided to purchase Genesis.… The fiercest
competition in the history of video games was about to begin."
- Game Over, David Sheff, 1993.
- Nintendo of America Content Guidelines
- Mortal Kombat II cover artwork at
MobyGames
- Nintendo of America Customer Service – Nintendo
Buyer's Guide
- D. Sheff: "Game Over", p. 215. CyberActive Media Group,
1999.
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