Hiroshi Yamauchi
Hiroshi Yamauchi (山内 溥 Yamauchi Hiroshi, born November 7, 1927) was the third president of Nintendo beginning in 1949 until stepping down on May 31, 2002. Yamauchi is credited with transforming Nintendo from a small hanafuda card making company in Japan to the multi-billion dollar video game company that it is today. Yamauchi was succeeded at Nintendo by Satoru Iwata. Yamauchi also became the majority owner of the Seattle Mariners baseball team in 1992, which is now managed by former Nintendo of America chairman, Howard Lincoln.
As of 2005, Yamauchi is the 366th richest person in the world, having a net worth of approximately $1.8 billion [1].
Biography
Early years
Hiroshi Yamauchi was born on November 7, 1927 to Shikanojo Inaba and Kimi Yamauchi. His father, Shikanojo had previously agreed to adopt the Yamauchi family name; however, in 1933 he abandoned his family. Consequently, Hiroshi was raised by his grandparents Sekiryo and Tei Yamauchi.
In 1940 at the age of twelve, Yamauchi went to work in a military factory during World War II since he was too young to fight. When the war was over in 1945, Hiroshi went to Waseda University where he majored in Law. At the age of 21 his grandfather, the then-current president of Nintendo had a stroke and Hiroshi was requested to fill in as president. Shortly thereafter, his grandfather died.
Nintendo
Yamauchi led Nintendo, Co. Ltd. in a "notoriously imperialistic style." [2] Before his grandfather died, Yamauchi had him fire relatives working in the company so Yamauchi's control over the company would go unquestioned. He was the sole judge of potential new products, and only a product that appealed to him and his usually-accurate instincts went on the market.
North America
Arcade
Yamauchi decided to expand Nintendo into the United States in order to cash in on the growing American arcade market. He hired his well-qualified son-in-law Minoru Arakawa to head the new American operation. Yamauchi was confused when Japanese hits such as Radarscope, Space Fever, and Sheriff did horribly in the US. Yamauchi decided he needed to release a sort of game that Americans had never seen before, so he released the creative Shigeru Miyamoto's pet project Donkey Kong. It was a smash hit, and Nintendo of America was well on its way.
Nintendo Entertainment System
Super NES
Nintendo 64
GameCube
Yamauchi touted the GameCube as being a machine designed exclusively as a video game console, an approach which he considered unalike Microsoft and Sony's for their respective Xbox and PlayStation 2 systems. He effectively believed that whereas the GameCube would be specifically a video game console and hence the finest of its market, his reputed opponents would attempt to produce machines to the effect of jack of all trades, master of none, (both the Xbox and the PlayStation 2 having DVD and CD-ROM playback functionalities, and the Xbox featuring a hard drive) and thus he did not consider them to be direct competition to the GameCube.
Yamauchi also wanted the machine to be the cheapest available of its kind, in his belief that people "do not play with the game machine itself. They play with the software, and they are forced to purchase a game machine in order to use the software. Therefore the price of the machine should be as cheap as possible." Nintendo hence priced the GameCube significantly cheaper than its rivals in the market, although the console's games were priced identically to those designed for the competing systems.
He also sought to make sure the GameCube was a simple platform to create games for, an advantage which implied lower development costs; thus a greater number of developers would be attracted to the console, and subsequently a higher number of games would be made for it, produced and released at a faster rate.
Source: [3]
![[icon]](/wiki/File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg){kind=small} | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. |
Post-Nintendo
On May 31, 2002 Yamauchi stepped down as president of Nintendo and was succeeded by the head of Nintendo's Corporate Planning Division, Satoru Iwata. Hiroshi Yamauchi subsequently became the chairman of Nintendo's board of directors. He finally left the board in June 2005 due to his age and because he felt that he was leaving the company in good hands. Yamauchi also refused to accept his retirement pension, which was reported to be around $9 million to $14 million, feeling that Nintendo could put it to better use.
References
- ^ Template:Web reference simple
- ^ . ISBN 0761536434.
{{cite book}}: Missing or empty|title=(help); Unknown parameter|Author=ignored (|author=suggested) (help); Unknown parameter|Publisher=ignored (|publisher=suggested) (help); Unknown parameter|Title=ignored (|title=suggested) (help); Unknown parameter|Year=ignored (|year=suggested) (help)
External links
- IGN's report on Yamauchi's leaving of the board of directors
- N-Sider.com's article on The Mind Behind the Empire
- IGN's summary of the Hiroshi Yamauchi interview at Nikkei Business Daily
- ClassicGaming.com - Hiroshi Yamauchi Retires From Nintendo
- Hiroshi Yamauchi On Nintendo's Future from 1UP on FindArticles.com
- Biography of Hiroshi Yamauchi at Nintendo Land
- Forbes Faces: Hiroshi Yamauchi
- Parody: Miyamoto vs Yamauchi
- Reprint of the Hiroshi Yamauchi Wired Interview that was confirmed to be a hoax
 | This biographical article related to Japan is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
 | This Nintendo-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |