Yes, it was a playing card company.

And this is Nintendo today.

"It's-a Me, Mario!"

Consoles, theme parks, even movies.

So, what has driven the 44-billion-dollar empire?

This is "The Economics of Nintendo".

Nintendo is different from its competitors, Sony and Microsoft, thanks, in part, to its low-cost hardware.

Microsoft's Xbox makes no profit on its hardware.

Consoles are actually sold at a loss in the market.

So, when somebody goes and they buy an Xbox at their local retailer,

we're subsidizing that purchase somewhere between 100 and 200 dollars

with the expectation that we will recoup that investment over time through accessory sales in storefront.

And Sony only recently began to make a profit on the PlayStation 5.

Then there's Nintendo.

The technology is usually five or six years behind in terms of state-of-the-art.

But that means that they're cheaper to produce and that means that Nintendo is much, much more profitable on their hardware business.

About half of Nintendo's profit in 2022 came from hardware sales.

They've dominated the market when it comes to handheld consoles.

One of its big successes, the Game Boy, launched in 1989.

Nintendo was really early to the party with handheld.

They're kind of credited with inventing the console, although they were probably third or fourth.

The Game Boy had a longer battery life compared to some of its competitors.

Four shades of gray, nuanced gameplay, and had Tetris, one of the top-selling video games of all time.

Eventually, Nintendo's Game Boy became the third most sold console in the company's history, selling 119 million units to date.

The company continued to innovate, releasing new hardware for its games,

from the GameCube, Nintendo DS, the Wii, and to its most recent success, the Switch, with more than 122 million units sold.

You can play it at home like a console on your big screen TV, but you could pick it up and take it on the go.

And it becomes a handheld device, and that's pretty novel.

We haven't really seen anything that's, uh, hybrid like that before.

Sales of the Switch device and its games accounted for about 94% of Nintendo's sales revenue in its 2021 fiscal year.

And today, it's the second bestselling game console in Nintendo's history and continues to be a driving factor of its revenue.

The success of Nintendo's consoles is also due to its software.

In other words, its games.

In 2022, Nintendo had 19 first-party titles that sold over a million units each, exclusive to its consoles.

The difference between the others and Nintendo is that Nintendo, historically, has produced about 50% of all the games sold on its hardware system.

And the other guys are typically under 10% of the games sold on their systems.

So, they make make a small fraction of the software that's played on PlayStation and Xbox, and Nintendo makes more than half.

Case in point: "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" release in April, 2020, created higher demand for the only console carrying it, the Switch.

Nintendo makes games exclusively, for the most part, for its own devices.

If you want to play a Nintendo game, like "Legend of Zelda", you need Nintendo hardware.

In fact, Nintendo's first-party games generate over 70% of its sales.

Its best sellers in 2022 were all Nintendo first-party games.

And the type of content Nintendo makes is also different than its competitors.

Let's keep in mind, Nintendo characters are very cute.

"It's-a Me, Mario!"

Nintendo is known for making family-friendly games, for the most part, so it appeals to a different crowd than some of the other publishers.

You won't see blood or gore or foul language.

But even Nintendo, a couple years ago, dabbled into the shooter genre.

When we think of shooters, right, we think of "Call of Duty", "Fortnite".

They take a very family-friendly approach with "Splatoon".

It's a shooter, but you're shooting paintballs.

The company's next iteration?

Bringing these family-friendly characters to a larger arena and building another generation of fans.

In February, 2023, Nintendo opened its first theme park outside of Japan.

And in April, it's releasing a Super Mario Brothers movie starring Chris Pratt.

It's-a me, a-Mario.

That's smart, because that's gonna expose the Nintendo brand to hundreds of millions of people who haven't ever owned a Switch.

I don't think that Nintendo is necessarily worried about whether somebody who goes to the theme park will buy a Nintendo console or buy a game.

But they want those people to be aware of the Nintendo brands,

they want them to know who Mario is, and who Zelda is, and who Yoshi is, and who Pickmin is.

It is risky to start a new franchise, and sometimes new properties just don't resonate,

but they have plenty⏤a very deep library, and they've stuck with that, for the most part, and iterated on it and modernized it.

We'll probably be playing "Legends of Zelda" for another 20, 30 years.

Mario is probably not going anywhere.

You know, he's just gonna live forever, and keep that mustache, and keep everyone happy for many years to come.