1.Introduction
Game is something for men, especially young men. This kind of concept has been prevalent ever since game industry prospered. However, the concept is changing and the changes were made by a company: Nintendo. With its powerful characters such as Super Mario, Link from the Legend of Zelda, Nintendo was the most famous and popular game company until early 2000. However the dominant status of the firm was put in peril when 3D games became main stream. On contrast, Sony Computer Entertainment with its new game machine “PlayStation” emerged as a king of video games. For Nintendo the hardest time was 2003. Nintendo firstly in its history couldn’t make the end meet. After a few years, Nintendo regained its previous status as a dominant player in the game industry. There were two smash hits that brought the tremendous success to Nintendo: Nintendo DS and Wii. There are certainlysome reasons that made Nintendo so successful. This paper will cover some of the reasons by analyzing game industry and Nintendo’s key success factors.
A. Reason for choice
Nintendo had ups and downs within 5 to 10 years and made some critical choices to bring a tremendous success to the company. As a student majoring business, I thought there are plenty of things that we can learn from the case of Nintendo.
B.Financial status
In 2002, Nintendo made 600 billion Yen. This became more than 3 fold after only 5 years. In 2008, Nintendo earned 2.100 trillion Yen with 280 billion Yen net income. This eye popping growth is induced by two smash hit products: Nintendo DS and Wii.
2.Game industry analysis
Yoon Jong Yong, the president of Samsung Electronics, once said “game industry is potentially 160 billion dollar market. It is 3 times bigger than semi-conductor market which is only 30 billion dollar.” As he mentioned, game is a gigantic industry with rapid and stable growth. People buy games when the economy is in recession because they want to save money for entertainment by playing game at home rather than going out. On the other hands, they also buy games when the economy is booming just because they can afford them.