Video Games and the Home Video Game Industry

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By the end of the 70s, the total video game arcade market is $5 billion a year. This was the main application of Silicon for the 1970s for consumer markets. The fascinating thing about this pre-home console era is that there's basically no intellectual property yet because there's no stories yet. You're not going to figure out how to make pong into a movie or a TV show. It's a false comparison at this point in history.

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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