Nintendo

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Nintendo's market cap in 1990 of Nintendo is in the like 15 billion-ish category, which by today's standards seems quite small. From a market addressability perspective, it's interesting that what happened is they had literal perfect timing to enter a market that would become a hundred plus billion dollar market. But I was thinking about it and the reason I don't think it is an A plus is because of the fall that will happen at the beginning of the next episode.

You may think you know the Nintendo story: a plumber named Mario, a princess named Zelda… and didn’t they buy the Seattle Mariners at some point? We thought we knew it too. And then we started researching and were blown away.

The lovable Disney-like Nintendo that we know today is a 130 year-old a playing card company (i.e. gambling), forged in the shadowy world of the Yakuza and shaped by a four-generation cycle of bitter family betrayal. And its unlikely transformation into a global multi-billion dollar media monopoly was led by an iron-fisted patriarch who — amazingly — never played a video game in his life! Get ready for one of our favorite stories Acquired has ever told — we couldn’t make this one up if we tried!

ACQ2 Show: