Nintendo

Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, Nintendo; Originally named Nintendo Koppai, began their business by making handmade hanafuda playing cards. The playing cards became very popular quickly so Yamauchi began to mass produce the cards in order to satisfy the demands. Then in 1956, Fusajiro's grandson Hiroshi Yamauchi came to visit the United States to speak with the United States Playing Card Company. Hiroshi came to find out that the largest company in his business was only using a small office and realized that playing cards had a limitation. So Hiroshi then gained access to Disney's characters and put them on the cards in order to further their sales.
 * __[[image:http://outsiderjapan.pbworks.com/f/1238026120/Nintendo_former_headquarter_plate_Kyoto%20small.png width="250" height="195" align="left"]]Nintendo's Beginnings__**

__**Nintendo's Switch to Video Games**__ In 1974 Nintendo secured the rights to distribute the Magnavox Odyssey video game console which was their first venture into the video games industry. In 1977 Nintendo started to produce their own hardware, in which the Color TV Game was created. There were four versions of the Color TV Game produced and each had variations of a single game.

Around this time a student product developer by the name of Shigeru Miyamoto was hired by Nintendo. He was to create casings for some of the Color TV Game consoles and later comes to be one of the most famous and recognizable people in the video game industry. In 1975, Nintendo started to move their way into the arcade gaming industry and produced EVR Race. Some success followed this push, but not until 1981, when Miyamoto designed Donkey Kong, did Nintendo's fortunes change dramatically. media type="youtube" key="uVy5aqX2g1Q" height="390" width="480" In 1983, one of Nintendo's greatest consoles was produced. The Nintendo Entertainment System(NES) came to the United States in 1985 alongside with one of its most popular selling games, Super Mario Brothers. This boosted Nintendo's profits greatly. Following the success of the NES, a few years later, the SNES(Super Nintendo Entertainment System) was released. Unlike the 8-bit NES, the SNES was now 16-bit and was rivaled up against the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. This began a console war between the two companies Sega and Nintendo, but the SNES ended up selling 49.10 million consoles, which was around 20 million more than the Mega Drive.

Following all the success of the NES and SNES, Nintendo's next big hit was ready to hit the market. The Nintendo 64 was introduced in 1996 and brought a set of new features to the video game industry. The 64 had 3D graphics and built-in multiplayer for up to four players. Also the controller for the 64 introduced the analog stick and later came the rumble pack addon which was available with compatible games.
 * __More Success To Come__**

In 2001, Nintendo produced another home console, the Nintendo Game Cube. This was the first Nintendo product to use optical disc storage instead of using cartridges. Unlike the X-Box and Playstation 2 that came out at this time too, the Game Cube used miniDVD discs instead of full size DVD discs. This limits some features that using a full size DVD does, but it didn't stop them.

Five years later in 2006 and Nintendo's latest home console is now the Nintendo Wii. The Wii uses motion sensor controllers which was new for console gaming. Also unlike the Gamecube, the Wii has online capabilities. This allows one to use the internet channel and connect to Wi-Fi. As of April 2011, the Nintendo Wii leads its generation of systems over the X-Box 360 and Playstation 3 in worldwide sales.

__**Nintendo's in the Video Game Industry**__ Since becoming a part of the video game industry, Nintendo has become one of the most influential in the business and also Japans third most valuable company with a market value of over 85 billion dollars. As of October 18, 2010, Nintendo has sold over 565 million hardware units and 3.4 billion software units.