Welcome to VintageNintendo.com
Introduction
While Nintendo is a large multi-national with US$8 billion in revenue, the company had humble beginnings as a playing card company in Kyoto, Japan in 1889.
Their first game, Hanafuda, was very popular at home and abroad. Over the years, the company created a series of different playing cards for home and abroad. However, seeing that there was not a lot of money to be made, the company tried to diversify in the 1960s with several unrelated ventures from setting up a taxi company, a TV network and a toy company to a hotel chain. After ten years, the company was riddled with debt with only the toy company being profitable.
In 1970, the company had a stellar Christmas with the popular Ultra Hand. With cash in hand, Nintendo was able to stay afloat and focus on electronic game machines. The company began video game development in 1978 before moving into console development in 1983.
The Nintendo Entertainment System, also known as the Famicon, sold over 60 million units as saw the birth of the highly profitable Mario franchise.
Nintendo followed up the NES with the Super NES in 1990. The system featured improved graphics and sounds with a 16-bit game processor.
In 1996, Nintendo released their Nintendo 64, which did well, but only managed to sell 30 million units.
Nintendo released the Nintendo GameCube in 2001, which received moderate success with 20 million units sold. However, Nintendo's true success is their seventh generation console that has managed to sell 10 million units in its first year. The Wii has so far outsold Microsoft and SONY on month by months sales.
However, it should be noted that the Wii does not offer the same level of graphic performance as Microsoft and SONY. That being said, the unit is priced several hundred dollars less than its competitors and has a range of games targeted towards family play.
With net income for 2006 of US$1.4 billion, Nintendo continues to sell well and there is no reason that the company won't be around for many years yet.
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