How has Nintendo Dominated the Gaming Industry for Decades?

If you ask most people who are interested in games what was their first console most will say the Nintendo Entertainment System. It is no secret that Nintendo has maintained the top position in the gaming industry for decades and by no means is that a coincidence. In the summer of 1983 Nintendo released the NES, one of the companies first home video game consoles released outside of Japan.

To this day Nintendo has a continued success largely in part due to its robust gaming library. Games ranging from the successful Mario kart, Pokemon, Donkey Kong all the way to most popular of them all according to sales units Wii Sports.

When Nintendo released the Wii in the fall of 2006 it quickly became one of the best selling consoles competing with Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360. A very important variable in this success was the robust library of Nintendo. Wii sports is currently the best selling game of all of the 2016 year.

As the bar graph indicates Nintendo’s massive library has dominated the gaming industry for years. Wii Sports is the highest selling intellectual property Nintendo has 82 million copies sold globally. Nintendo is a household name. A continued trend of this company outselling its competitors is not a coincidence. Super Mario Bros., Mario Kart Wii, and even Wii Sports Resort reporting strong numbers in 30 million sales globally.

The line graph breaks down the sales recorded only in North America. As you can see Wii Sports is at the peak with 40.2 million sales recorded. Even though it shows various smaller peaks and valleys, Nintendo games tend to sale way past the 1 million mark in terms of sales in North America. The data I have gathered shows that while Nintendo has shown some decline as the decades go by they still dominate the gaming industry with popular games that resonate with a lot of people’s childhood but continue to attract new fans. Everybody has heard of Nintendo, it is no question that they are a household name. It is company that still commands strong sales figures well into 2020.

In summary Nintendo Inc. has been at the top of gaming industry for several decades with very few signs of slowing down even with two large competitors rising up and being successful in their own ways. They continue to make history in our current times.

Data was sourced from https://www.kaggle.com/gregorut/videogamesales.

General research was done through Nintendo.com official website.

All data analysis and visualizations was done by me.