Nintendo
Nintendo Co., Ltd.[b] is a Japanese multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops, publishes and releases both video games and video game consoles.
Nintendo
任天堂株式会社
Nintendō kabushiki gaisha
- Nintendo Koppai (1889)
- Other former names
- Yamauchi Nintendo (1889–1933)
- Yamauchi Nintendo & Co. (1933–1947)
- Marufuku Co., Ltd. (1947–1951)
- Nintendo Playing Card Co. Ltd. (1951–1963)
- TYO: 7974
- TOPIX Core30 component (7974)
- Nikkei 225 component (TYO)
23 September 1889 in Shimogyō-ku, Kyoto, Japan
Worldwide
- Shuntaro Furukawa (president)
- Shigeru Miyamoto (fellow)
- Hardware
17.97 million - Software 213.96 million
- Animal Crossing
- Art Style
- Big Brain Academy
- bit Generations
- BoxBoy!
- Brain Age
- Chibi-Robo!
- Cruis'n
- Custom Robo
- Donkey Kong
- Dr. Mario
- Excite
- F-Zero
- Fire Emblem
- Fossil Fighters
- Golden Sun
- Kid Icarus
- Kirby
- The Legend of Zelda
- The Legendary Starfy
- Mario
- Mario Kart
- Mario Party
- Metroid
- Mother
- Pikmin
- Pilotwings
- Pokémon
- Punch-Out!!
- Puzzle League
- Splatoon
- Star Fox
- Super Mario
- Super Smash Bros.
- Touch! Generations
- Wario
- Wars
- Wii
- Xenoblade Chronicles
- Yoshi
¥504.3 billion (US$3.678 billion) (2023)
¥432.7 billion (US$3.156 billion) (2023)
¥2.662 trillion (US$21.866 billion) (2023)
¥2.069 trillion (US$16.995 billion) (2023)
The Master Trust Bank of Japan, Ltd. (17.05%)
JPMorgan Chase (9.90%)[1]
Public Investment Fund (8.3%)[2]
Custody Bank of Japan, Ltd. (5.97%)
7,317[a] (2023)
Nintendo was founded in 1889 as Nintendo Koppai[c] by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produced handmade hanafuda playing cards. After venturing into various lines of business during the 1960s and acquiring a legal status as a public company, Nintendo distributed its first console, the Color TV-Game, in 1977. It gained international recognition with the release of Donkey Kong in 1981 and the Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Mario Bros. in 1985.
Since then, Nintendo has produced some of the most successful consoles in the video game industry, such as the Game Boy, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the Nintendo DS, the Wii, and the Switch. It has created and/or published numerous major franchises, including Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Fire Emblem, Kirby, Star Fox, Pokémon, Super Smash Bros., Animal Crossing, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Splatoon, and Nintendo's mascot, Mario, is internationally recognized. The company has sold more than 5.592 billion video games and over 836 million hardware units globally, as of March 2023.
Nintendo has multiple subsidiaries in Japan and abroad, in addition to business partners such as HAL Laboratory, Intelligent Systems, Game Freak, and The Pokémon Company. Nintendo and its staff have received awards including Emmy Awards for Technology & Engineering, Game Awards, Game Developers Choice Awards, and British Academy Games Awards. It is one of the wealthiest and most valuable companies in the Japanese market.
1889–1950
1950–1960
1960–1965
1965–1967
1967–1968
1968–1970
1970–1972
1972–1975
1975–2006
2006–2016
2016–present
Policy
Content guidelines
For many years, Nintendo had a policy of strict content guidelines for video games published on its consoles. Although Nintendo allowed graphic violence in its video games released in Japan, nudity and sexuality were strictly prohibited. Former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi believed that if the company allowed the licensing of simply games, the company's image would be forever tarnished.[277] Nintendo of America 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 symbols—with the exception of widely unpracticed religions, such as the Greek Pantheon.[278] The Japanese parent company was concerned that it may be viewed as a "Japanese Invasion" by forcing Japanese community standards on North American and European children. Past the strict guidelines, some exceptions have occurred: Bionic Commando (though swastikas were eliminated in the US version), Smash TV and Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode contain human violence, the latter also containing implied sexuality and tobacco use; River City Ransom and Taboo: The Sixth Sense contain nudity, and the latter also contains religious images, as do Castlevania II and III.
A known side effect of this policy is the Genesis version of Mortal Kombat having more than double the unit sales of the 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 graphics in its release of the game, making it less violent.[279] By contrast, Sega allowed blood and gore to remain in the Genesis version (though a code is required 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.[280]
Video game ratings systems were introduced with the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) of 1994 and the Pan European Game Information of 2003, and Nintendo discontinued most of its censorship policies in favor of consumers making their own choices. 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,[281] a practice which is also enforced by Sony and Microsoft, its two greatest competitors in the present market. Nintendo has since allowed several mature-content games to be published on its consoles, including Perfect Dark, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Doom, Doom 64, BMX XXX, the Resident Evil series, Killer7, the Mortal Kombat series, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, BloodRayne, Geist, Dementium: The Ward, Bayonetta 2, Devil's Third, and Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water.
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, the GameCube game Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, and the 3DS game Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater 3D, included such references), and maiming and blood were removed from the Nintendo 64 port of Cruis'n USA.[282] Another example is in the Game Boy Advance game Mega Man Zero 3, in which one of the bosses, called Hellbat Schilt in the Japanese and European releases, was renamed Devilbat Schilt in the North American localization. In North America releases of the Mega Man Zero games, enemies and bosses killed with a saber attack do not gush blood as they do in the Japanese versions. However, the release of the Wii was accompanied by several even more controversial games, such as Manhunt 2, No More Heroes, The House of the Dead: Overkill, and MadWorld, the latter three of which were initially published exclusively for the console.
License guidelines
Nintendo of America also had guidelines before 1993 that had to be followed by its licensees to make games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, in addition to the above content guidelines.[277] Guidelines were enforced through the 10NES lockout chip.