Nintendo Case

A) Brief introduction of history of company and what is its current strategic position within its industry. What issue (s) is it facing?

Nintendo was formed in 1889 in Kyoto, Japan. They started making playing cards until 1963 when they moved onto making different games. The company started making electronic toys in 1970, but it wasn’t until 1981 when Nintendo launched the coin operated arcade game ‘Donkey Kong’, which gave Nintendo a well-known name in North America, Asian and Europe. The success of Donkey Kong gave Nintendo the resources to open its North American Headquarters in Seattle in 1982. The Family Computer home video gaming system launched in 1983 in Japan and later in 1985 they released the same system as Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Super Mario Brothers was one of the original games available for the NES and went on to be ranked one of Nintendo’s top selling game of all time. In 1981 Nintendo released the Game Boy, which became one of the worlds best selling video game playing systems. Super Nintendo was released in 1991 with upgraded graphics, sound and a wider variety of games. 1996 was a very big year for Nintendo with their release of N64, which resulted in record high revenues for Nintendo. Gameboy Advance and Game Cube were both released in 2001with Game Cube selling 21.7 million units, but still considered inferior to Sony and Microsoft’s rival platforms (PS2 and Xbox). In 2004 Nintendo release the DS, to fight off competition in the handheld video game market. The DS had sales of over 50 million units and by 2007 it became the fastest selling handheld video game console of all time. In 2006 the Nintendo DS Lite was release along with the very popular Nintendo Wii.

Nintendo’s innovative products are what make them stand out from they’re competitors. Nintendo Wii is cheaper than both the PS3 and Xbox 360 in terms of price. In terms of performance the Nintendo Wii is not built with as many features as the Xbox360 and PS3. In Nintendo’s defense this was not they’re intention with the Wii, Nintendo decided to build a platform that is simple that anybody