Nintendo: An Unprecedented Success

image courtesy of vix.com

By LYNN YUAN ‘21

Pokemon, Mario, Kirby, and Zelda are some of the popular franchises with which most of our generation is familiar. While not all of us grew up playing or watching these popular series, most of us at least know the basic premises of these stories. 

Less well known, however, is the fact that all of these titles are owned by Nintendo, an $85 Billion company founded over a hundred years ago in Japan. While Nintendo’s long-lasting history and early contributions to the development of the gaming industry are certainly noteworthy, Nintendo’s emphasis on having a “home console” sets it even further apart from modern gaming companies. Not only does Nintendo release a new console every decade or so, but Nintendo games are also exclusively playable on Nintendo consoles. In an age where PS4-released games are available on the XBox and XBox games are compatible on PC, this marketing tactic is unheard of and seems redundant in many ways. For one, the Nintendo market is not a very large one. Since Nintendo is only one company, its yearly video game output cannot possibly compare to the combined output of thousands of companies, large and small. As such, the number of original games released on the most recent Nintendo console, the Switch, is far lower than the number of fresh games put out on Xbox and PC. Along with the smaller release pool, Nintendo’s games are almost always of the same variety and genre: bright, adventure-based, and suitable for children, with low emphasis on blood and gore. With a smaller game pool and a niche genre, why would anyone go out of their way to buy a new console just to play a very specific set of games?

Yet this exclusivity is exactly what draws consumers to Nintendo and its products. Many users agree that what makes Nintendo special is the fact that the games differ from those that you can get on PC. What’s more, Nintendo has carefully set a trap for its consumers from a young age. The console that I grew up with, the Nintendo 3DS, costs only $60 USD, a price far cheaper than those of other major consoles on the market. Although the games available on the DS were limited, I, a younger kid, didn’t mind because those were the games I wanted to play anyways: Kirby SuperStar Ultra, Pokemon Heart Gold, and so forth. This childhood association with Nintendo caused me to continue buying newer versions of the DS when they came out and eventually also purchase the Switch. The Switch’s price range is significantly higher, posing at roughly 300 USD, and breaches the same price range of major consoles such as PS4 and XBox. Yet I knew that I would buy it anyway because of my own long-time devotion to titles such as Pokemon, Animal Crossing, and Kirby—upcoming new titles that undoubtedly will be released exclusively on the Switch in the future. 

While Nintendo’s consumer model is far from conventional, looking closer at its customer base helps us realize why Nintendo is still one of the top companies in the gaming industry. While Nintendo has definitely seen its share of failures, such as the release of the WiiU, its successes have far outweighed the failures, and these successes have carried the gaming company to its position as one of the largest in the market.