May 8 2015, 08:50 PM, updated 11y ago
QUOTE
Did you know that Nintendo has almost set up operations in Malaysia?
In 1979, then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi thought of building a subsidiary in Southeast Asia. He wanted this in hopes of reducing manufacturing cost. He presented the idea to his son-in-law Minoru Arakawa and asked him to lead the business. Although Arakawa had dedicated most of his working life outside Japan, he refused Yamauchi’s offer. As far as he was concerned, Malaysia was Siberia. He did not know anything about it.
In a few year’s time after this father and son-in-law conversation, Arakawa went on to establish and oversee Nintendo of America, revived the North American gaming industry from the Atari crash of 1983 and the rest, as they always say, is history.
Actually, you might have been part of this history.
How many of you carried your GameBoy to school? Or played the Family Computer with your brother? How many Pokemon have you caught in Pokemon Red? Did you ever get Mew via the glitch method? How awesome was it to save Princess Zelda over and over again, or rescue the damsel Peach from Bowser over countless number of worlds?
When I was a kid, I walked a few hundred of meters to go to my cousin’s home every Saturday. We play Super Mario World on their Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Our family never got one. At that point in time, I did not even realize there was already a Nintendo 64, or even a PlayStation. Only years later I found out about it. Maybe its the product of being a kid who doesn’t know much.
Or maybe it was because I was in a place where there are no Internet gaming magazines. No gaming companies who will bombard video game advertisements on television. Maybe that is why I did not know.
The bookworm in me thoroughly enjoyed “Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered The World“, a book about Nintendo’s early history. It is the source of the anecdote early in this article. Much of it was about Yamauchi, the man who transformed the company from a builder of love hotels and Japanese hanafuda cards into the gaming powerhouse that it is today. The middle of the book discussed in detail the company’s foray into America and shortly in Europe. The last part was about the company’s attempt to secure rights in publishing the hit Russian game, Tetris.
There wasn’t much in the book about Nintendo in Asia.
Throughout the book, Asia was referred as the region where Nintendo sold twice as many legal Famicoms as pirated Famicoms. Yes, whenever Asia was written, it is closely followed by the word piracy. There was too much piracy in Asia that perhaps Nintendo instead chose to focus solely on the rich markets in the west in the 90s.
However, the times have changed. The rich markets in the west are not convinced with the company’s Wii U system. China is now the world’s 2nd largest economy, and the PS4 has already sold 10 million units (a certain percentage of it was from Asian sales).
In 1979, then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi thought of building a subsidiary in Southeast Asia. He wanted this in hopes of reducing manufacturing cost. He presented the idea to his son-in-law Minoru Arakawa and asked him to lead the business. Although Arakawa had dedicated most of his working life outside Japan, he refused Yamauchi’s offer. As far as he was concerned, Malaysia was Siberia. He did not know anything about it.
In a few year’s time after this father and son-in-law conversation, Arakawa went on to establish and oversee Nintendo of America, revived the North American gaming industry from the Atari crash of 1983 and the rest, as they always say, is history.
Actually, you might have been part of this history.
How many of you carried your GameBoy to school? Or played the Family Computer with your brother? How many Pokemon have you caught in Pokemon Red? Did you ever get Mew via the glitch method? How awesome was it to save Princess Zelda over and over again, or rescue the damsel Peach from Bowser over countless number of worlds?
When I was a kid, I walked a few hundred of meters to go to my cousin’s home every Saturday. We play Super Mario World on their Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Our family never got one. At that point in time, I did not even realize there was already a Nintendo 64, or even a PlayStation. Only years later I found out about it. Maybe its the product of being a kid who doesn’t know much.
Or maybe it was because I was in a place where there are no Internet gaming magazines. No gaming companies who will bombard video game advertisements on television. Maybe that is why I did not know.
The bookworm in me thoroughly enjoyed “Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered The World“, a book about Nintendo’s early history. It is the source of the anecdote early in this article. Much of it was about Yamauchi, the man who transformed the company from a builder of love hotels and Japanese hanafuda cards into the gaming powerhouse that it is today. The middle of the book discussed in detail the company’s foray into America and shortly in Europe. The last part was about the company’s attempt to secure rights in publishing the hit Russian game, Tetris.
There wasn’t much in the book about Nintendo in Asia.
Throughout the book, Asia was referred as the region where Nintendo sold twice as many legal Famicoms as pirated Famicoms. Yes, whenever Asia was written, it is closely followed by the word piracy. There was too much piracy in Asia that perhaps Nintendo instead chose to focus solely on the rich markets in the west in the 90s.
However, the times have changed. The rich markets in the west are not convinced with the company’s Wii U system. China is now the world’s 2nd largest economy, and the PS4 has already sold 10 million units (a certain percentage of it was from Asian sales).
https://vulcanpost.com/37321/nintendo-asia/
Supported by http://www.nesworld.com/article.php?system...data=nes-system and http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/minoru_arakawa
This post has been edited by leonhang: May 8 2015, 08:51 PM
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