Nintendo is still number one

19.10.2009 by Mikami Ryo

"Business Week" elected Nintendo as World's Best Company over Google and Apple. I thought of the company as "Hiroshi Yamauchi Co., Ltd, with Shigeru Miyamoto," so thought it would lose power following the retirement of Yamauchi in 2005. In fact, Nintendo stock plummeted when he declared his retirement in 2002.

He is such a weenie, but also a genius and pioneer of the videogame industry. Nolan Bushnell, CEO of Atari, made the first step, but it was Yamauchi who made gaming a global culture. This began with the success of the NES in 1983. Satoru Iwata from HAL followed him. Nevertheless the son of Yamauchi was working at Nintendo. In addition, Hiroshi Arakawa, CEO of NOA (Nintendo Of America), known as the person who made "Donkey Kong" a success in America, retired in 2002. He married Yamauchi's daughter.

Nintendo was established in the nineteenth century (Nintendo Co., Ltd was established after the World War 2) and Yamauchi was its third CEO. In half a century he took one small toy shop in Kyoto and made it into the "World's Best Company."

The following are some saying attributed to him:



"Nintendo will only sell games for the Disk System."
"I shall retire if such a shit device [Playstation] will sell over a million."
[On making a copy of Space Invader] "There is no patent in the way of play."

Yamauchi retired, but Nintendo had not ended. What will this amazing company bring us in the next half century?