NINTENDO SWITCH CONSOLE - Official Reveal Trailer

Nintendo Co., Ltd. (Japanese: 任天堂株式会社 Hepburn: Nintendō kabushikigaisha?) is a Japanese multinational consumer electronics and software company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. Nintendo is one of the world's largest video game companies by net worth.[4] Founded on 23 September 1889,[1] by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it originally produced handmade hanafuda playing cards.[5] By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as cab services and love hotels.[6] The word Nintendo can be roughly translated from Japanese to English as "leave luck to heaven".[7]

Abandoning previous ventures in favor of toys in the 1960s, Nintendo then developed into a video game company in the 1970s, ultimately becoming one of the most influential in the industry and Japan's third most-valuable company with a market value of over $85 billion.[8] From 1992 until 2016, Nintendo was also the majority shareholder of Major League Baseball's Seattle Mariners.[9]

As of 31 March 2014, Nintendo has cumulative sales of over 670.43 million hardware units and 4.23 billion software units.[10] The company has created some of the most well known and best-selling video game franchises in the industry, such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Metroid, while also owning The Pokémon Company.

The Nintendo 64 was released in 1996, featuring 3D polygon model rendering capabilities and built-in multiplayer for up to four players. The system's controller introduced the analog stick and later introduced the Rumble Pak, an accessory for the controller that produces force feedback with compatible games. Both are the first such features to have come to market for home console gaming and eventually became the de facto industry standard.[77] Announced in 1995, prior to the console's 1996 launch, the 64DD ("DD" standing for "Disk Drive") was designed to enable the development of new genre of video games[78] by way of 64 MB writable magnetic disks, video editing, and Internet connectivity. Eventually released only in Japan in 1999, the 64DD peripheral's commercial failure there resulted in only nine games being released and precluded further worldwide release.