Gaming Becomes a $150 Billion Market

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Would we think that like Nintendo was gonna take over the world and expand beyond gaming? Probably. We would have said it'd be $150 billion market but if something else. It's almost like all the people in 2016 when asked about crypto, they were like, oh, I'm not so sure about Bitcoin, but I think the blockchain is gonna be a fundamental technology. And you're like, "I don't know exactly what the AI use cases are yet, but I'm sure it's gonna be huge"

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!

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