Nintendo

Nintendo Co., Ltd. is a Japanese company headquartered in Kyoto that manufactures and sells home entertainment products, principally video games and the consoles that run them.¹¹³ Founded in September 1889 and incorporated in November 1947, it is among the oldest companies in the video game industry and one of the most valuable, ranking 610th on the Forbes Global 2000 in 2026.¹¹⁵ The company is listed on the Prime Market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange under the stock code 7974 and employed 8,666 people on a global consolidated basis at the end of March 2026.⁵¹ Its capital stood at 10,065,400,000 yen, and Nintendo Co., Ltd. alone — excluding subsidiaries — employed 3,084 people at the same date.¹ Forbes reported revenue of $15.4 billion, assets of $23.9 billion, and profits of $2.8 billion in its 2026 listing.¹⁵

Origins as a playing-card maker

The business was established in 1889 when Fusajiro Yamauchi began manufacturing and selling hanafuda?, traditional Japanese playing cards, in the Shimogyo-ku district of Kyoto.²⁴ Hanafuda is a floral-covered card game whose twelve suits depict the flowers and foliage of the year’s seasons, among them plum and cherry blossoms, peonies, chrysanthemums, and maple leaves.¹⁰ The early decks were hand-printed using a stencil technique called kappa-zuri, with black outlines most likely woodblock-printed or made with a copper plate.¹⁰ Nintendo continued to use hand-made steps in the production of its hanafuda through the early 1970s, because the last step of pasting backing paper onto the cards was particularly hard to automate ¹⁰; the company finally automated that step with machines in 1968.²

Over a century ago the game was a mainstay of illicit gambling dens, and the long-nosed yokai Tengu came to be associated with the cards because the Japanese word for “nose” (hana) is a homophone of the word for “flower” (hana).¹⁰ Gamblers visiting the pleasure quarters of Osaka and Kyoto would touch their noses as a sign that they were looking for gambling games.⁸ The meaning of the name “Nintendo” (任天堂) is itself uncertain; it is commonly said to mean “leave luck to heaven,” but the company founder’s descendant Hiroshi Yamauchi described that as merely a “plausible explanation,” and no archival records validate any single interpretation.⁸ Nintendo began making the first Western-style playing cards in Japan in 1902 and from 1959 sold cards bearing Disney characters.²⁸

In 1947 the founder’s successors established Marufuku Co., Ltd. in the Higashiyama-ku district of Kyoto as the predecessor of the present company.² The firm was renamed Nintendo Playing Card Co., Ltd. in 1951, consolidated its scattered Kyoto manufacturing facilities in 1952, became the first company in Japan to mass-produce plastic playing cards in 1953, and adopted its current name, Nintendo Co., Ltd., in 1963.² It listed its stock on the Second Section of the Osaka Securities Exchange and the Kyoto Stock Exchange in 1962, moved to the Exchange’s First Section in 1970, and listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1983.² Hiroshi Yamauchi, the founder’s great-grandson, took over the company in 1949 at age 22 and led it until 2002, dying in 2013 at the age of 85.⁴

Entry into games and consoles

Nintendo moved into electronic entertainment in the 1970s, developing the Laser Clay Shooting System for leisure facilities in 1973 and launching its first home video game machines, TV Game 15 and TV Game 6, in 1977.² It entered the arcade business in 1978, and in 1980 began selling the Game & Watch handheld line and established its American subsidiary, Nintendo of America? Inc., in New York; the New York operation was merged into a Seattle-based subsidiary in 1982.²¹⁷ In 1981 it released the coin-operated game Donkey Kong, which quickly became the best-selling individual coin-operated machine in the business.²¹⁷

In 1983 Nintendo launched the Family Computer System in Japan, sold abroad as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and established a new manufacturing plant — now its Uji Plant — in Uji City, Kyoto.² The NES reached America in 1985, the same year Nintendo released the Super Mario Bros. software, which introduced the character Mario.²¹⁷ The character Link first appeared in the Legend of Zelda game for the NES in 1986.¹⁷ Many of these titles were created by Shigeru Miyamoto, hired by Nintendo in 1977, who went on to design Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., and The Legend of Zelda.⁴

A succession of hardware followed: the handheld Game Boy? in 1989, bundled with Tetris; the Super Famicom, or Super Nintendo Entertainment System, in 1990; the Nintendo 64? in 1996, launched in the United States on September 29 alongside Super Mario 64; the Game Boy Advance and the disc-based Nintendo GameCube in 2001, the first Nintendo system to use optical discs instead of cartridges; the dual-screen Nintendo DS in 2004; the motion-controlled Wii in 2006; the Nintendo 3DS in 2011; and the Wii U in 2012.²¹⁷ The Game Boy Color introduced in 1998 carried Pokémon, a breakthrough concept that generated a worldwide craze.¹⁷ The Wii became the best-selling later-generation console of its era and in 2008 the first system bought by more than 10 million Americans in a single year.¹⁷

The Switch era and diversification

In 2017 Nintendo launched the Nintendo Switch?, a home video game system that can also be used as a handheld, followed by hits including Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.²¹⁷ The company added the online service Nintendo Switch Online in 2018 and released the portable-focused Nintendo Switch Lite in 2019 and an OLED model in October 2021.²³¹⁷ For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2022, Nintendo sold 23.06 million Switch units — a 20.0 percent decrease year-on-year owing to shortages of semiconductor components — and saw a total of 39 software titles surpass one million units, with Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Pokémon Shining Pearl selling a combined 14.65 million units and Pokémon Legends: Arceus selling 12.64 million units.³ Older titles continued to sell, with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe reaching cumulative sales of 45.33 million units and Animal Crossing: New Horizons 38.64 million.³

Nintendo Switch 2 – Overview TrailerNintendo of America

Beyond consoles, Nintendo expanded into mobile applications beginning with Miitomo in 2016, opened its first flagship store, Nintendo TOKYO, in Shibuya in 2019, and saw the world’s first SUPER NINTENDO WORLD theme park land open at Universal Studios Japan in 2021.² The release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie in 2023 marked the company’s first animated movie produced in partnership, and the Nintendo Museum opened in Uji, Kyoto, in 2024.² Nintendo transitioned to the Prime Market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2022 and launched the Nintendo Switch 2? in 2025.² In 2025 it agreed to acquire a majority stake in Bandai Namco Studios Singapore from Bandai Namco Studios Inc..¹³

In 2025, French authorities concluded that Nintendo of Europe had committed a deceptive commercial practice between 2018 and 2023 by failing to inform consumers candidly about a “drift” malfunction affecting certain Joy-Con controllers of the Nintendo Switch launched in March 2017; the company accepted a penal settlement of 35,000,000 euros.¹⁹

Corporate structure

Nintendo’s headquarters were relocated in 2000 to 11-1 Hokotate-cho, Kamitoba, Minami-ku, Kyoto, where they remain.²¹ The company is led by Representative Director and President Shuntaro Furukawa and Representative Director and Fellow Shigeru Miyamoto.¹ Its principal affiliated companies include Nintendo of America? Inc., Nintendo of Europe SE in Germany, The Pokémon Company?, and the development studios 1-UP Studio, MONOLITH SOFTWARE, and Nintendo Pictures.¹ As of March 2022 the company had 129,869,000 shares outstanding before a ten-for-one stock split scheduled to take effect on October 1, 2022; following the split the total number of shares outstanding stood at 1,287,260,000, held by 484,413 shareholders.³⁵ Major shareholders have included The Master Trust Bank of Japan, holding 16.05 percent, and The Bank of Kyoto; in 2013, Hiroshi Yamauchi himself was the largest shareholder with 10.00 percent.⁵⁷