The Untold TRUTH Of Nintendo

the latest video game craze to sweep the United States and Japan it's called Nintendo now what's Nintendo you ask and why should you care well I think it's something you should know about because it's captured America's children Nintendo revitalized the video game industry and once that started it was it was like a Snowball Effect there was just no stopping it Nintendo of America has emerged as the industry leaders it's a billion dooll industry by itself Nintendo Home Entertainment games are blowing other items out of the water Super Mario Brothers is the all-time bestselling video game

on the market Nintendo is well almost the most fun a kid can have discover the secret of Nintendo's success is how Nintendo changed the industry forever I feel like there's no company that hates its own user base more than Nintendo although they have this cute cuddly front that everybody loves they have a much dark seedier backside for almost 100 years Nintendo Nintendo had nothing to do with gaming its president didn't even play video games calling it a pointless distraction instead Nintendo was involved in illegal gambling where their biggest customer was the Japanese Mafia Nintendo also

ran SD love hotels where you pay by the hour and they even had their own brand of instant rice so how did a small family run business turn into one of the bestselling gaming companies of all time responsible for some of the most iconic characters ever created it's time to take a journey through Nintendo epic history from Mafia to Mario from gambling to Game Boy and from bankruptcy to billions this is the insane story of [Music] [Music] Nintendo to tell the story of the video game giant we know today we first have to go back

to a very different time back when Japan was still ruled by an emperor before electricity was common and before flight itself was invented it all begins with Nintendo's original founder fusajiro yuchi fusajiro grew up interested in Art and Design but his duties as the eldest son required him to go to work to help support his family and so from the age of 13 he worked tirelessly at a cement company however by 29 years old fusajiro had saved up enough that he wanted to start his own business where he could finally work on his art and

thus in 1889 he opened a small shop in the ancient Japanese city of Kyoto where he produced and sold hand painted playing cards he called his new business Nintendo copy but this was actually a little more controversial than it sounds for centuries playing cards had been banned in Japan this was partially because Japan had been in a period of isolation from the rest of the world and so all foreign influences had been cut off but it was also because playing cards were used for gambling which was strictly illegal in Japan thus playing cards had become

mostly used in underground casinos run by criminal gangs known as the Yakuza essentially Japanese gangsters as a result the playing card industry in Japan had all but died out with most companies not wanting to get involved given the risk of being shut down or associated with murderous criminals however fusajiro saw this as an opportunity there was one type of playing card that the Japanese government hadn't outright banned it was called hanafuda which translates the flower card s these cards had artistic traditional designs on them instead of numbers unless they were more so considered art rather

than something that would be used for illegal gambling fusajiro felt this was a gap in the market and a chance to utilize his artistic skills thus he began working in his home studio making these cards by hand he would grind the bark of mulbury trees into paste and mix it with Clay he then pressed the paper into molds and used natural ink from flower petals and berries to stencil beautiful designs onto the paper on the cards he painted intricate symbols of flowers moons swords mountains and animals he then packaged these hanafuda cards and sold them

through his small store however because the cards were split into 12 suits each containing four cards these cards could easily be used for many different card games including for illegal gambling and sure enough the Yakuza soon started using fusajiro cards in their underground casinos they loved Nintendo's craftsmanship and quality which was far superior to Alternatives and better yet in order to prevent anyone from cheating the Yakuza used a new deck of cards for every single game this meant a lot of repeat business for Nintendo and the Yakuza quickly became Nintendo's biggest customer now some people

may say that fujiro had just intended to create artistic designs never expecting they would be used like this but others would argue this was his plan all along many people interpret the word Nintendo to mean leave luck to heaven and so the company's name may have been a subtle wink to those looking for a gambling fix and thus fusajiro likely always knew who his biggest customers would be either way he' spotted an opportunity and business was now booming in fact fusajiro could barely keep up with the demand as he was initially making every card himself

painstakingly painting every detail of course he quickly realized this wasn't scalable and so in order to maximize production he hired a small team of workers to make the cards under his close supervision once he' perfected this process fusajiro wanted to expand across the whole of Japan and so he struck up a surprising partnership with the Japan tobacco and Salt Company where they would stock Nintendo's cards in all their stores across the country and this deal worked brilliantly as it gave Nintendo National Distribution for their cards not just that but in 1907 Japan's ban on playing

cards loosened and so Nintendo was perfectly positioned to become the first Japanese company to produce western style playing cards as well as a result of all this Nintendo soon became the most successful playing card company in all of Japan but at the age of 69 after 40 Years of hard work fusajiro had achieved everything he had set out to do and was finally ready to retire there was just one problem who was going to take over his company [Music] fusajiro desperately wanted to keep his company in the family but it was Japanese custom to pass

the business onto your son and fusajiro had no son and so fusajiro arranged for his daughter to marry a well-respected businessman from a good family his name was sakiro and once he became fusajiro son-in-law and officially became part of the yuchi family he was able to become the new president of Nintendo once fusajiro retired in 1929 during his 20-year term sakiro was a good president applying his Savvy business skills to expand the company even more he built bigger and better systems created more Partnerships hired sales staff and moved into bigger headquarters for Nintendo to mass

produce their cards but tragically sakio also had no Sons to whom he could pass on the family business just just like the generation before the yuchi name risked being forgotten so history basically repeated itself just as sakiro himself had done one of his sons-in-law took the Yami name after marriage and thus everyone assumed sako's son-in-law would be next in line to take over the Nintendo business that was until 1932 when sako's son-in-law suddenly abandoned his young family and ran away leaving his wife and their 5-year-old son all alone that boy's name was Hiroshi yuchi and

with his father now gone Hiroshi was Tech te Ally sako's only male Heir and thus next in line to become Nintendo's president however by the time Hiroshi was old enough to go to university he decided to study law and so it was unclear exactly what the future would hold for him but then in 1949 21-year-old Hiroshi suddenly got a call that would change his life forever hiroshi's grandfather sakiro had suffered a debilitating stroke and was about to die Hiroshi was asked to drop out of University in the middle of his degree and take over the

family business now remember Nintendo was Japan's largest playing card company so this was undoubtedly a huge amount of pressure and responsibility for the 21-year-old with no real business experience but without any emotion to the devastating news Hiroshi immediately accepted the position with one startling request Hiroshi said all of his family members who worked for Nintendo would have to be fired so everyone would know he was in charge and nobody would question his leadership it was a bold demand but sakiro had no real Choice he fired anyone related to him and Hiroshi yuchi took control of

the company family had started 60 years earlier sakiro died shortly after and Nintendo's long period of stability was now over because when this unproven 21-year-old unexpectedly took charge of Nintendo that's when everything began to [Music] change [Music] from day one Hiroshi believed his Destiny was to make his ancestors proud and established Nintendo as a household name around the world to do that he felt Nintendo needed to evolve and innovate it couldn't just be content doing things the way it always had but this meant many of his employees resented him especially because they believed he was

too young and inexperienced to lead a company as big as Nintendo it felt unfair that this 21-year-old was suddenly here calling the shots wanting to change things all because he was siro's grandson therefore there was initially lots of backlash against Hiroshi in response one of hiroshi's first decisions as Nintendo's new leader was to fire anyone who Dar challenge his vision or anyone who wanted to keep things the way they always had been Hiroshi wanted to make a statement that he was in charge now and you were either on board or you were out hiroshi's next

move was to expand upon what was already working Nintendo made great cards everyone in Japan knew that but what could Hiroshi do to take things further well in the 1950s Hiroshi took a life-changing trip to the US where he saw firsthand the popularity of Disney characters Hiroshi then negotiated Nintendo's very first licensing agreement to print Disney characters on Nintendo playing cards this move meant that the company was no longer just for gamblers and serious card players Nintendo had now created a product that entertained a broader Market of Japanese families and children but for Hoshi that

was just the start if Hoshi wanted Nintendo to become as big as he knew it could he needed Nintendo to become a global company he also knew they needed to sell more than just playing cards so Hoshi shortened the company's name to Simply Nintendo removing the word copy which was the Japanese word for playing cards was the idea of expanding the business into new countries and new products made sense in theory the execution was a disaster in 1963 Hiroshi tried just about anything for example Nintendo began selling instant rice operating taxis and there were even

rumors of managing sedy love hotels where customers pay by the hour there was also speculation Hiroshi himself was their biggest customer but none of these new business lines had any real success in fact Hiroshi almost took the company to bankruptcy chasing International Fame with all these different products and services but through this he quickly learned a lesson Nintendo's past wasn't something to ignore there was value in staying loyal to its entertainment Origins he just needed a breakthrough product other than playing cards and that breakthrough came in 1966 one day when Hiroshi was walking through the

playing card Factory floor stressed thinking about what Nintendo's next product could be he saw a young worker called gunpei yoy playing with a small toy it was a plastic extendable hand that gunpei had built in his free time after seeing this Hiroshi immediately summoned gpe into his office gpe started to panic thinking he was about to be fired why else would the boss be calling him in suddenly but instead Hiroshi said he wanted gun's toy which he called the ultra hand to be mass-produced by Nintendo he then said he wanted gune to oversee the production

of a million units in time for the holidays gune was thrilled it started out at the lowest ranks of the company working as a janitor and assembly line worker but now his toy was going to be Nintendo's next big product gunay adapted EAS easily to his promotion overseeing research and development and his toy went on to sell 1.2 million units finally Nintendo had found a new winning product and thus this toy had essentially saved Nintendo from disaster it also meant that after years of experiments and totally random markets it was now clear to Hiroshi that

since playing cards and this ultran toy had been Nintendo's two big successes he should double down on making games which was good because gunpei had a new idea an idea that would change everything [Music] [Music] gunay spent much of the early '70s making one toy design after another but nothing was quite as successful as the ultrahand had been in fact Nintendo's fascination with new electronic toys nearly killed the company with Hiroshi taking Nintendo once again to the edge of bankruptcy in 1973 by betting on random new ideas but one day on Japan's bullet train gune

watched on as a businessman killed time playing with his electronic calculator this gave gunpei the inspiration for his next design a portable game that only needed watch batteries to run Hiroshi loved the idea too and so gpe got to work by 1980 Nintendo introduced the pocket size game calling it Game and Watch and once again gun's originality pulled the company out of debt Nintendo could barely stop the shelves fast enough to keep up with the rising demand for this new portable electronic game it was also around this time that Hiroshi noticed the popularity and profitability

of arcade games especially Space Invaders which was responsible for a nationwide shortage of 100 yen coins because everyone wanted to play and Hoshi saw a way to get in on the hype after all he already had a team with the electronic knowhow from his Game and Watch series so surely it wouldn't be that hard to create his own arcade game to capture a slice of this new booming industry since everyone already loves space Invaders Hiroshi blatantly copied the game and Nintendo released its own version called radar scope and because the US was the largest arcade

game in Market hirosi contracted a small team of six to start a new Venture called Nintendo of America which would be based in the United States and would distribute Nintendo's new arcade game in the US but the people of America didn't want a Japanese version of Space Invaders they wanted something new and different as a result radar scope bombed horribly and Nintendo was stuck storing 3,000 very expensive big arcade cabinets that nobody wanted to play the units gathered dust in the warehouse and Nintendo barely had enough money to cover the rent to store them all

as you can see it felt like Nintendo was continually lurching from having one good idea to then a bad idea that derailed all their progress but back in Japan Hiroshi would not be beaten rather than writing off these arcade machines as a failure Hiroshi held a competition for ideas to convert the radar scope games into a completely new game this time it was gun paace personal mentee shiru mamoto who would save Nintendo despite having no gaming experience shikuru came up with an idea that would forever change Nintendo's path and Define gaming for an entire generation

shikuru wanted to create a game based Loosely on the popular cartoon Popeye but instead of paying expensive licensing fees he replaced every character with something new the villain Bluto well he looked like a big ape the gentle olive oil well she could be a princess in distress and popey was in shu's words just a normal middle-aged man not too handsome but with a strong sense of justice he could be a blue color guy wearing overalls sh designed the character with a distinctive Red Hat mainly because hair was too hard to animate but now he had

the characters he began working on the game play which was simple but deceptively challenging the main character had to jump over barrels climb to the top of platforms and rescue the princess who was held hostage by the oversized ape which they named Donkey Kong when shiru showed his new game concept to Hiroshi he loved that Hiroshi tasked him with actually building the arcade game so they could convert all their unused radar scope arcade boxes into this new Donkey Kong game instead over in America the team hands switched every component and started testing the Donkey Kong

game in nearby bars and baron is loved there because players were depositing hundreds of quarters a day frantically the American team converted every arcade unit they had into the new Donkey Kong game and asked Nintendo to ship over as many cabinets as they could make in Japan Hiroshi dropped all other planned arcade games and started pumping out Donkey Kong cabinets making up to 50 new units a day to ship boatloads at a time over to the US Donkey Kong or DK as it was nicknamed became a huge success over its first 2 years Donkey Kong

earned an incredible $280 million there was just one problem the hero still needed a name at the time they just called him Jumpman and so the American team were talking about it one day do you guys remember the landlord from our old radar scub Warehouse did you guys noticed that when he was screaming about our rent he jumped up and down just like Jumpman yeah and he even had the same mustache jokingly they changed jump man's name to honor their grumpy old landlord and that landlord's name Mario but from then on the name just stuck

and Jumpman officially became known as Mario Nintendo had a huge hit on their hands and they began Distributing more and more of these arcade games all around the world but they would soon find out just how dangerous success can [Music] be the huge amount of money that the Donkey Kong arcade games made attracted a lot of attention to Nintendo in particular one movie studio claimed that Donkey Kong looked a little too familiar Universal Studios hit Nintendo with a massive lawsuit since Universal said they own the rights to the character King Kong and that Donkey Kong

was just a copy of their intellectual property Universal demanded that every scent Nintendo would earn from Donkey Kong should instead be paid to them this would completely Crush Nintendo since this was by far their most popular and successful game and so Nintendo hired a renowned trial lawyer called John Kirby to defend their trademarked image Kirby read the lawsuit and immediately felt Universal's claim was weak so Kirby traveled to Japan to learn more about Donkey Kong's origin story even on the way to his hotel Kirby saw the name King Kong everywhere there were King Kong Car

Washers King Kong wrestlers and King Kong sandwich shops this got Kirby thinking if Universal really did have a good claim why wouldn't they sue all these other businesses using the King Kong name and image well Kirby realized there were two reasons one was that in Japan King Kong had basically become another word for gorilla it had just become a generic term everyone used but secondly when Kirby dug into this further he realized that the fact Universal had never tried to sue any of these other companies over trademark issues was because Universal didn't even really have

any trademark rights to protect years earlier in a separate lawsuit it had been declared that the character of King Kong was in fact public domain for anyone to use of the trial Kirby presented his case he even brought in an arcade cabinet to let the judge play Donkey Kong for himself and see that Donkey Kong was different to the film character in universals movies anyway after hearing the arguments the judge overwhelmingly agreed with the tiny Nintendo team and threw out the lawsuits it went down as a case of a giant Corporation essentially trying to overpower

a much smaller business with legal threats when in reality it had no legal basis to do so the whole thing completely backfired for Universal and Nintendo continued to push on with Donkey Kong as a thank you to the lawyer John Kirby who had helped save their company Nintendo decided to name one of their next Heroes after him hence the much beloved pink fluff ball became known as Kirby who also never backed down from a fight with everything now resolved it looked like Nintendo was set to become a massive player in the video game worlds but

who could have possibly predicted that the entire video game industry was about to [Music] collapse in 1982 the video game industry was enormous as technology was rapidly getting cheaper and more powerful instead of just playing video games in arcades conss were created so people could play at home thus console companies like Atari began to thrive however this success resulted in loads of different companies entering the market even stores like Radio Shack and seers were trying to sell their self-branded consoles to get in on the hype but this meant by 1983 Gamers had countless console options

but most of them had been very quickly and poorly made and with each console the companies released their own games but software limits meant the games were too similar too small or too easy people quickly began to grow frustrated as they there were too many options for consoles and too few options for good games the market was oversaturated and there was a major lack of quality all around one by one all of these companies went bankrupt games started selling for $5 just to get them out the store even the industry leader Atari was in big

trouble they'd massively overestimated how many people would want to play its new ET game based on the Blockbuster movie as they produced 4 million copies of the game but only managed to sell 1.5 million as the video Market began to collapse Atari burned and buried their unsold games and consoles in a New Mexico landfill site meanwhile retailers refused to stock any new consoles and the entire gaming industry lost 97% of its value between 1983 and 1985 but back in Japan Nintendo president Hiroshi saw the American crash as an opportunity at this point Nintendo was only

known in America for its arcade games but Hiroshi felt this was the perfect point to test a New Home console he'd been working on the family computer known as the famicom Hiroshi had always had a reputation as a prolific Gambler both in his personal life and in business and once again he decided to bet big by closing down the whole of Nintendo's arcade division which was raking in millions of dollars every year just so he could go all in on pushing his new console idea the same year that America's gaming industry was crumbling he launched

the famicom in Japan his personal test Market it was cheaper than a traditional console and came with new games in entirely new scrolling styles that felt fresh and different as a result the famicom became Japan's most popular console over the next few years one in six people in the country owned a famicom but Hiroshi was barely paying attention to the enormous success of his console in Japan like always Hiroshi wanted to go Global and the launch of the famicom in Japan was really just a test run he was already laying his plans to become the

leading console maker overseas especially in the US now most people thought that this was a terrible time for Nintendo to be thinking about entering the American console Market the video game industry had essentially just collapsed and even the industry leader Atari had lost over $600 million the previous year and was near bankruptcy but to Hiroshi this just meant there was a golden [Music] opportunity but before we hear about hiroshi's golden opportunity let's talk about a golden opportunity for you now I think we all know the power of building an online community if you have a

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Hiroshi stubbornly refused to play his own console and yet somehow he understood Gamers and thus W Japan loved the Nintendo famicom Hiroshi felt they needed to Rebrand it and make a few changes before launching it abroad most notably they changed the name to the Nintendo entertainment system or the NES as it became known and before the big us launch of their new home video game console Hiroshi knew they needed a great new game to launch alongside it as a lack of great games had been a huge reason so many other consoles had failed and so

Hiroshi reunited his dream team firstly shiru was tasked with developing the game shuru decided to bring back the Mario character that was so popular from their Donkey Kong arcade game and so this new game would be called Super Mario but since their new NES console allowed for more expansive gameplay than their old arcade machines it me shagu came up with much more interactive gameplay whereas Donkey Kong had just four basic levels Super Mario had 32 the gamepl took hours and Shiro filled the levels with invisible boxes hidden way to get extra lives and secret areas

to skip ahead in the game secondly Hiroshi needed good design as most other consoles used bulky joysticks on controllers that looked ugly and broke quickly and so Hiroshi put gune on the case who developed a cross-shaped directional pad which he called the d-pad he also helped to redesign the NES console with a Sleek Sil the look that felt more premium and thirdly Hiroshi demanded excellent audio if Gamers were going to play this game for hours they needed music that was catchy and sounds that wouldn't get annoying so Hiroshi paired up his game designer shuru with

a talented electronic music Creator who would create completely different songs for each level along with iconic beeps and effects that would fit perfectly with chiru's game the end result of all of this was their new Super Mario game was incredibly different to anything Nintendo had tried before it was much more in- depth than their simple old arcade games the downside of this was that development had taken way longer than Hiroshi wanted but shiru simply told him a late game is only late until it ships a bad game is bad until the end of time and

the Nintendo's team Devotion to get in the console and the game right was immediately obvious players who tried it didn't just want to beat the game they wanted to replay each level again and again so Hiroshi was ready for the American launch of the NES and Super Mario in 1985 but first they had to convince electronic outlets and department stores to actually sell it remember Nintendo was only known in America for its arcade games and given the retailers bad experience with other consoles during the video game market crash many were reluctant to stop this new

console Nintendo salesman literally went door too trying to convince retailers that the NES wasn't like anything they'd seen before to sweeten the deal Nintendo even offered to buy back any unsold consoles once retailers finally agreed to sell it Hoshi made the surprising decision to keep the price low you see Hiroshi admired the razor and blade business strategy used by Gillette sell your main product cheaply to get people into your ecosystem and then make your profit selling the complimentary products people will need afterwards and so the actual NES console would sell for just over $100 but

the plan was to release new games every few months to keep people playing and make the majority of profit from the games themselves once again Nintendo was betting everything on this if people didn't like it and come back to buy more games Nintendo would would be heading for financial ruin however once the NES launched it was clear Nintendo had succeeded in the first year the console sold 3 million units the next year it was 6 million eventually Nintendo's breakout console would be in one out of every six homes throughout the US selling over 60 million

units the NES completely rejuvenated the American video game Market with many hailing Nintendo as the savior of video games but shikuru wasn't the kind of game designer to rest on his success he already had a new hero he wanted to introduce as he biked to work one day shuru thought about the kind of game he wanted to play as a kid instead of a sides scrolling game he imagined a digital version of a tabletop game a tied overview where the main character could explore the world and meet new characters guru's new game would be called

The Legend of Zelda and it would go on to sell almost 7 million copies this born Nintendo's second iconic series The Lincoln Zelda games which have sold over 150 million copies to date but as well as great and great games Nintendo worked hard to build a sense of community in the late ' 80s Nintendo launched its own magazine to Hype new releases provide Game maps and give hints to especially tricky levels Nintendo also advertised a helpline for gamers that wanted to call in and speak to someone about a boss they couldn't be or a PowerUp

they couldn't find Nintendo even sponsored a Countrywide televised competition to find the best Gamers as a result of all this Nintendo's popularity continued to grow other companies might have rested there basking in the glow of such enormous success but not Nintendo once again gune had been busy in his workshop and had designed a new handheld console that you could take with you wherever you went they called it the game boy because you could easily insert different game cartridges it meant you could have loads of different games in your pocket and just like NES players were

hooked on the Super Mario game Nintendo's Game Boy came with an iconic game of its own Tetris the game was so powerfully addictive that some players started reporting that after playing the game they would literally dream about falling blocks which became known as the tetris effect the Game Boy sold out across the US President Bush was photographed using one and a Russian astronaut even took one to space in fact the Game Boy so twice as well as the NES far exceeding what Hiroshi thought was possible by the late ' 80s the NES and The Game

Boy were both household names coming from seemingly nowhere Nintendo had achieved a miraculous onew knockout punch launching both their iconic Home console and portable console in quick succession thus solidifying its place at the top of the video game industry in the US just like her roshi had always wanted it helped of course that Nintendo had a knack for developing such iconic characters for example 7 years after the launch of the Game Boy the Pokémon company was founded as a joint venture between Nintendo and two other companies and this went on to become a worldwide sensation

in its own right and whilst the Game Boy was helping Nintendo dominate on the small screen they'd soon be dominating on the big screen as a huge movie studio came calling asking Nintendo if they could release a movie featuring their Mario character for Nintendo this was just free advertising so they agreed the movie was called The Wizard and went on to be a cult classic and make millions in profit the irony of all this though was that the movie Studio who produced the movie was Universal the very same Studio that tried to sue Nintendo out

of existence a few years [Music] earlier Nintendo now owned almost 90% of the video game Market but by the late ' 80s a serious competitor started to emerge Sega and thus began what many referred to as the console Wars sega's new console the Genesis or the mega drive as it was known outside the US was one of the first consoles on the market to be 16 bit instead of 8 bit it had improved hardware and more power thus meaning it was capable of better graphics and sound compared to the NES and to make matters worse

for Nintendo Sega decided to directly attack Nintendo in its advertising Sega realized that Nintendo's family oriented marketing meant it wasn't really reaching an old the demographic so Sega jumped on this opportunity and marketed their Genesis console as not only Superior to Nintendo's console but also more mature sega's marketing campaign painted Nintendo as a toy for children and Genesis as a much cooler console that wasn't just for kids Sega also had more games that would appeal to adults like super Monaco GP golden a and Joe Montana football they also had games with more violence as opposed

to Nintendo's squeaky clean family image for example Mortal Kombat on the NES had no blood but there was blood if you bought the game on a Sega console instead Sega leaned into this with their ads claiming Genesis does what Nintendo owns as Sega continued to promote themselves as the console for the rebellious generation this caused a lot of back and forth competition between the two companies throughout the early 1990s however while people were starting to notice Sega for its rebellious and Brash attitude in marketing Sega were initially missing something that Nintendo had a mascots Nintendo

had the iconic Mario so while Sega may have had better graphics and more action-packed games they didn't have a face for their brand a flagship character to help sell more so Sega held a contest to decide a mascot for the company and this is when one SRE employee put forward the design of a speedy Hedgehog character who would come to be known as Sonic the character immediately caught on and thus the stage was set Nintendo vers Sega and Mario vers Sonic in retaliation to sega's Growing popularity Nintendo launched the Super Nintendo entertainment system or SNES

and this was 16 bit and a direct competitor to Sony's Genesis but Sega quickly responded by undercutting Nintendo on price they decided the Genesis console would not only include their new Sonic game bundled in but that the console price would be dropped from $199 to $149 therefore becoming $50 cheaper than Nintendo's console with similar specs Sega banked on the fact that if they could sell more consoles they'd make more money in the long run as people would buy more games for the Genesis on the advertising front more attacks against Nintendo continued as sega's ads directly

compared their Genesis console against Nintendo's console they pointed out that the Sega was notably cheaper and had the tagline a whole lot more for Less however despite sega's best efforts Nintendo ultimately won the console war Nintendo always had an advantage thanks to its other popular consoles like the Game Boy and then the Game Boy Color whereas sega's next few consoles the Saturn and the Dreamcast were both received very poorly sega's main focus seemed to be to compete with its Rivals instead of focusing on what their customers actually wanted most but just as Hiroshi thought the

war was over an even more dangerous rival [Music] emerged [Music] in June 1991 thousands of people gathered at the Consumer Electronics Show to hear the latest technology news it was here that Sony announced they'd struck up a partnership with Nintendo and were developing a new CD ROM add-on for the Super NES console up until this point the console could only take lowquality game cartridges so there was a lot of excitement around this CD idea as video games with larger fall size and better graphics could be stored on CDs so Sony also revealed that they were

going to work with Nintendo to create a new hybrid console that would have a CD drive belt in given Sony's experience with CDs and Nintendo's experience with consoles seemed like a great partnership however the very next day it was Nintendo's turn to give a presentation with all of their upcoming news everyone including Sony expected Nintendo to go into more detail about this partnership but they did not instead Nintendo revealed that actually they were not going to be working with Sony but instead with Sony's biggest rival Phillips Sony was shocked and Furious it was a public

humiliation for them but it turns out that behind the scenes Hiroshi and the Nintendo team had become increasingly concerned about Sony as they feared that Sony just wanted to use this project to get into the games business themselves and were basically just using Nintendo as a wein not just that but Nintendo began to realize that some of the terms in the deal they'd agreed massively favored Sony which is why Nintendo had decided to partner with Phillips instead but still the very public and sudden way they they cut Sony out the deal was controversial to say

the least and if Nintendo's intention was to stop Sony becoming a competitor to them it backfired horribly Sony's president was so angry he decided to press on without Nintendo and they created Sony Computer Entertainment a division focused on video games since Sony had already done work on this CD console idea they used that technology to create their own new console without Nintendo called the PlayStation Sony spent a long time working on this but when it was finally released it not only had better 3D graphics and a large selection of games but it was cheaper too

and it became a huge hit so whereas Nintendo could have worked with Sony now they were Rivals and thus the early 2000s became an extremely challenging time for Hiroshi and Nintendo whil Nintendo was struggling to perfect its next console Sony came out with the PlayStation 2 in the year 2000 which hit Nintendo even harder Sony earned $250 million from its first day with a range of hundreds of games the PlayStation 2 was far superior to anything yet PS2 players could also play online a feature that Nintendo had refused to offer for years the PS2 even

played DVDs and the PS2 stayed on sale for 12 years the longest time for any console it eventually became the best selling console of all time selling 155 million units worldwide and the following year in 2011 things got even worse for Nintendo as Microsoft announced their own console the Xbox which was also a huge hit players loved games like Halo aimed at a more mature audience meanwhile Nintendo's newest console the GameCube struggled to compete against what Sony and Microsoft to Creed it was a dark time for the company made even worse in 2002 when Hiroshi

yuchi decided to retire ending a 53-year iron grip on the company Hiroshi was the one who taken Nintendo from handcraft in playing cards in Japan to a worldwide video game Empire and thus he'd largely been Nintendo's key to success despite not using his own consoles Hiroshi had always seemed to have a sick sense of what Gamers wanted he'd often made decisions that seemed counterintuitive but ended up paying off massively like when he shut down his hugely profitable Donkey Kong arcade game to go all in on risky home consoles during the video game market crash but

these wild decisions were what had led Nintendo to become so dominant and now he was leaving for the first time in 110 years the company would not be controlled by anyone from the Yami family Hiroshi was gone Microsoft and Sony were thriving and some began to wonder if this was the end of Nintendo but before we get to the next chapter if you sell anything online you're going to want to know about today's sponsor ship station shipstation software makes e-commerce so much easier and saves you both time and money firstly ship station integrates everywhere you

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a free trial to test it out risk-free it's really quick to get started so set your business up for holiday season success with shipstation go to shipstation.com magnates today and sign up for your free 60-day trial that's shipstation.com [Music] magnates [Music] the fourth president of Nintendo would be satu iata who'd been with the company for years and was one of Nintendo's original Developers for games like Mario Karts however when he took over from Hiroshi in 2002 everyone seemed to be talking about the Xbox and the PS2 not Nintendo was this might seem like a formidable

challenge satoru was ready for it and it definitely seem like he knew his Nintendo history because 5050 years earlier hirosi had seen the power of expanding his playing cards Beyond serious card players by licensing Disney characters and in a sense saur's plan was to do the same thing for video games to make a console that didn't just appeal to Serious Gamers he figured why compete in such a small competitive market why not instead create a whole new market and thus he decided Nintendo's next console would appeal to everyone and to make that happen he turned

once again to Nintendo's Golden Boy shuru mamoto shuru was told the New Vision a console for everyone controls should be intuitive it should be fun for all es anyone should be able to pick it up and immediately understand how to play the game and so in 2006 after years of development shagaru and curu launched Nintendo's newest Innovation the Wii Wii controls were gestures wave the wireless controller this way or that way and it responded immediately the first game wi Sports wasn't some Adventure game or complex Mission they were a collection of games everyone already knew

how to play like bowling golf or baseball and thus everybody from Toddlers to seniors immediately knew exactly how to use a Wii satu even allowed online play and unlike the PS2 and Xbox it was free Microsoft and Sony already had the hardcore Gamers but the Wii captured everyone's attention it wasn't competing on HD graphics or mature games it was launched to anybody who just wanted to have fun and Nintendo's plan worked the Wii sold out every month for 3 years straight in 2006 Nintendo sold more Wiis than Xboxes and PlayStations combined overall the Wii sold

100 million units better than anything Nintendo had ever done once again Nintendo had found success not by competing directly with its competitors but by innovating and finding its own Niche they'd managed to tap into a casual Market that had previously ignored gaming and as a result they'd reached a whole new audience this is exactly what they did with the switch as well allowing people to play Nintendo both at home and on the road Nintendo's ability to keep innovating like this is the reason why so many different Generations feel a connection to the brand many seen

Nintendo as a defining part of their childhood however not everyone is such a fan of Nintendo but the company has a pretty terrible reputation when it comes to content creators and streamers it really began in 2013 when Nintendo started copyright claiming all footage of their games on YouTube meaning that even using a fraction of any Nintendo gameplay would see them take all your revenue and when Nintendo eventually realized that they were losing out loads of free advertising by stopping creators playing their games Nintendo then opened a Creator program where you could play their games in

your video if they got to take 30% of your money and micromanage what you said even in much more recent times Nintendo has ued endless strikes against content creators even for simple fan-made videos Nintendo has also faced criticism from Greenpeace who regularly plays Nintendo on its worst offender list saying their consoles have been produced in Sweatshop like conditions in China but despite these controversies it's clear that Nintendo's brand is currently as strong as ever because in 2023 the Super Mario movie produced the biggest ever opening for an animated film beating titles from Frozen The Lion

King and Toy Story the success of the film just shows how powerful Nintendo's brand brand and characters still are with one study finding that Mario is more recognizable than Mickey Mouse pretty crazy when you consider where the company began making handmade playing cards for the Yakuza now if you enjoyed this story of Nintendo you are going to love the crazy story of Lego which you can watch by clicking this thumbnail on screen now all that's left for me to say is thank you for watching magnates media you are a legend and I'll see you over

in this next video in just a second cheers a