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Nintendo Company, Limited (任天堂 Nintendō^more...

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1em;">?; NASDAQ: NTDOY, TYO: 7974 ) is a multinational corporation founded on September 23, 1889 in Kyoto, Japan by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce handmade hanafuda cards. In the mid-twentieth century, the company tried several small niche businesses, such as a love hotel and a taxi company. Over the years, it became a video game company, growing into one of the most powerful in the industry. Aside from video games, Nintendo is also the majority owner of the Seattle Mariners, a Major League Baseball team in Seattle, Washington, also they are the partial owner of the Atlanta Hawks, an NBA team in Atlanta, Georgia.

Nintendo has the distinction of historically being both the oldest intact company in the video game console market and one of the largest and well-known console manufacturers, as well as being the most dominant entity in the handheld console market. As of December 1, 2006, Nintendo has sold over 387 million hardware units, and nearly 2.2 billion software units worldwide.

History

Early life

Nintendo started as a small Japanese business by Fusajiro Yamauchi near the end of 1889 as Nintendo Koppai. Based in Kyoto, Japan, the business produced and marketed a playing card game called Hanafuda. The handmade cards soon began to gain popularity, and Yamauchi had to hire assistants to mass produce cards to keep up with the demand.

Middle life

In 1956, Hiroshi Yamauchi paid a visit to the US, to engage in talks with the United States Playing Card Company, the dominant playing card manufacturer in the US. Yamauchi was shocked to find that the world's biggest company in his business was relegated to 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, in order to drive sales.

In 1963, Nintendo Playing Card Company Limited was renamed to Nintendo Company, Limited by Hiroshi. Nintendo now began to experiment in other areas of business using the newly injected capital. During the period of time between 1963 and 1968, Nintendo set up a taxi company, a "love hotel" chain, a TV network, a food company (trying to sell instant rice, similar to instant noodles), and several other things (including a toy remote controlled vacuum cleaner called Chiritory - which was later seen as a two-player game in WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ in 2003). All these ventures failed, except toymaking, where they had some earlier experience from selling playing cards. Then, after the Tokyo Olympics, playing card sales dropped, leaving Nintendo with a measly 60 yen in stocks.

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