Hiroshi Yamauchi facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Hiroshi Yamauchi
山内溥
3rd President of Nintendo
In office 25 April 1949 – 24 May 2002
Preceded by	Sekiryo Kaneda
Succeeded by	Satoru Iwata
Personal details
Born	(1927-11-07)7 November 1927 Kyoto, Empire of Japan
Died	19 September 2013(2013-09-19) (aged 85) Sakyō-ku, Kyoto, Japan
Cause of death	Pneumonia
Spouse	Michiko Inaba ​ ​ (m. 1945; died 2012)​
Children	3
Alma mater	Waseda University
Occupation	President and chairman of Nintendo (1949–2002)

Hiroshi Yamauchi (山内溥, Yamauchi Hiroshi, 7 November 1927 – 19 September 2013) was a Japanese businessman. He was the third president of Nintendo, a famous company that makes video games. He started working at Nintendo in 1949 and led the company until 2002.

During his 53 years in charge, Yamauchi changed Nintendo a lot. It went from a small Japanese company that made playing cards called hanafuda to a huge global company that makes billions of dollars from video games. He was the great-grandson of Fusajiro Yamauchi, who founded Nintendo.

By 2013, Forbes magazine said Yamauchi was one of the richest people in Japan. He owned a large part of Nintendo.

Early Life and Family

Hiroshi Yamauchi was born in Kyoto, Japan. When he was five years old, his father left the family. His mother found it hard to raise him alone, so she gave him to her parents. His grandfather was a business owner, which meant Hiroshi would later take over the family business, Nintendo.

At age twelve, he went to a special school in Kyoto. He wanted to study law, but World War II changed his plans. He was too young to fight, so he worked in a factory that made things for the military. After the war ended in 1945, Yamauchi went to Waseda University to study law. He married Michiko Inaba.

Leading Nintendo

Becoming President of Nintendo

In 1948, Yamauchi's grandfather, Sekiryo Kaneda, who was the president of Nintendo, became very ill. He asked Hiroshi to leave his studies at Waseda University and become the new president. Hiroshi agreed, but only if he was the only family member working at Nintendo. His grandfather agreed, and Hiroshi took over in 1949.

Because he was young and didn't have much experience, many employees didn't take him seriously. When factory workers went on strike, Yamauchi showed his authority. He fired many long-time employees who questioned his decisions. He changed the company name to Nintendo Karuta and set up a new main office in Kyoto.

Yamauchi made all the big decisions about new products. Only ideas that he liked and felt good about would be made and sold.

From Cards to Toys

Yamauchi was the first to bring plastic Western playing cards to Japan. These cards were new in Japan and were linked to games like poker. In 1959, Nintendo made a deal with Walt Disney. They started making plastic playing cards with Disney characters.

Nintendo wanted these cards to be for fun family games, not just gambling. They even included a small book with rules for different card games. This idea worked very well! They sold 600,000 sets in one year, and Nintendo became the top playing card maker in Japan. After this success, Yamauchi changed the company name again to Nintendo Company Limited and made it a public company.

Yamauchi then visited the biggest playing card maker in the world, in the U.S. He saw that making cards was a small business. He realized Nintendo needed to try new things.

When he returned to Japan, Yamauchi tried different businesses like a taxi company and selling instant rice. These ideas did not work out and almost caused Nintendo to go bankrupt.

One day, Yamauchi saw an engineer named Gunpei Yokoi playing with a simple toy claw he made. Yamauchi told Yokoi to turn it into a real product. This toy was called the Ultra Hand, and it became a huge hit!

This success made Yamauchi decide that Nintendo should focus on making toys. Nintendo already had a way to sell products to stores, so moving into toys was easy. Yamauchi created a new department for research and development, led by Gunpei Yokoi. Yokoi used his engineering skills to create electric toys like the Love Tester and a light gun. These toys were very new and exciting in the 1960s, when most toys were simple. Nintendo soon became a major toy company.

Entering the Electronics Era

Yamauchi saw that electronics were becoming cheaper and could be used in entertainment. Companies like Atari and Magnavox were already selling video game consoles for TVs. Yamauchi made a deal with Magnavox to sell their console, the Magnavox Odyssey, in Japan.

After hiring some engineers, Nintendo launched the Color TV Game 6 in Japan. They made several updated versions of this game series.

Yamauchi wanted Nintendo to grow in the United States because the arcade game market was getting big there. He asked his son-in-law, Minoru Arakawa, to lead the new American office. Nintendo's Japanese arcade games like Radar Scope and Sheriff didn't do well in the U.S.

So, Yamauchi turned to a game designer named Shigeru Miyamoto and his new game, Donkey Kong, in 1981. This game became a massive success!

Yamauchi had a special way of developing products. He set up three different research and development teams. These teams competed with each other to create new and exciting ideas. This system led to many unique and successful products. Yokoi's team created the Game & Watch, which was the first portable LCD video game with a computer chip.

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)

Yamauchi was very confident about the Famicom, which was Nintendo's new home console in Japan. He promised an electronics company that Nintendo would order one million units within two years. The Famicom easily reached that goal.

After selling millions of units, Yamauchi understood that the games themselves were the most important part. He made sure the system was easy for game creators to use. Yamauchi believed that artists, not just technicians, made great games. The Famicom was later released in the United States as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

Even though Yamauchi had no background in engineering or video games, he was the one who decided which games would be released. His amazing ability to guess what people would want in the future was a big reason for Nintendo's success. To encourage creativity, he kept his three research and development groups competing, which pushed designers to work harder.

Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)

In 1990, the Super Famicom was released in Japan. It came out a year later in North America and Europe as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). The Super Famicom sold out in Japan within three days, and gamers even camped outside stores to get one.

Nintendo grew a lot during this time, building new factories and research centers. They also partnered with the game company Rare. Yamauchi continued to be very good at spotting great games, even without playing them himself. By 1995, even at 68 years old, he was still fully in charge of Nintendo and was known as a very respected person in the video game industry.

In 1995, the Virtual Boy was released. It didn't sell well, but Yamauchi said he still believed in it and that Nintendo would keep making games for it.

Nintendo 64 and GameCube

In 1996, Nintendo released its new console, the Nintendo 64, which could create full 3D graphics. Around this time, Yamauchi said he wanted to retire but didn't think there was a good person to take his place yet. A year later, he announced he would retire by 2000.

In 1999, Yamauchi and Nintendo announced they were working on a new system called Dolphin, which would use special IBM and Matsushita technology. This system later became known as the GameCube.

Yamauchi said the GameCube was made only for playing video games. It didn't play movies or music like some other consoles. He believed this focus on "performance only" and making it easy for developers to create games would make the GameCube special.

He also wanted the GameCube to be the cheapest console. He thought that people buy a game machine just to play the games, so the machine itself should be as affordable as possible. Nintendo priced the GameCube much lower than its rivals, though the games cost the same.

After Being President

On May 24, 2002, Hiroshi Yamauchi stepped down as president of Nintendo. Satoru Iwata, who was head of Nintendo's planning division, took over. Yamauchi then became the chairman of Nintendo's board of directors. He left the board completely in 2005 because of his age and because he felt the company was in good hands.

Yamauchi also refused to take his retirement money, which was millions of dollars. He believed Nintendo could use the money better. He remained Nintendo's biggest shareholder for a long time. In 2006, he started Shigureden, a museum of poetry in Kyoto. He also gave a lot of money to build a new cancer treatment center in Kyoto.

Personal Life

Hiroshi Yamauchi and his wife Michiko had their first child, a daughter named Yōko, in 1950. Later, they had another daughter, Fujiko, and a son, Katsuhito.

Yamauchi's father, Shikanojō, returned years later to see his son, but Yamauchi refused to speak to him. When Yamauchi was almost 30, he learned his father had died. At the funeral, he met his father's other family members, whom he never knew about. He felt sad that he hadn't made up with his father when he had the chance. This event changed Yamauchi, and he visited his father's grave regularly after that.

Yamauchi was known as a serious man who focused strongly on his business. He did not play video games himself. His main hobby was the strategy board game Go. He was very skilled at Go, like a master chess player. He also enjoyed playing hanafuda cards with Nintendo employees at parties.

Owning the Seattle Mariners

In the early 1990s, the professional baseball team, the Seattle Mariners, was for sale. A U.S. Senator asked Nintendo of America to find a Japanese investor to keep the team in Seattle. Yamauchi offered to buy the team, even though he had never watched a baseball game.

The team owner accepted his offer. However, the head of Major League Baseball (MLB) and other team owners were against a non-North American owner. But because the people of Seattle strongly supported the idea, the deal was approved. Yamauchi had to agree to have less than 50% of the voting power. This was a big moment for American baseball, as it opened the door for Japanese baseball players to join American teams. In 2000, the team made a profit for the first time since Yamauchi bought it. Yamauchi never attended a Mariners game.

Death

Hiroshi Yamauchi passed away on September 19, 2013, at the age of 85. He died in a hospital due to problems from pneumonia. Nintendo released a statement saying that its staff were sad to lose their former president.

See also

In Spanish: Hiroshi Yamauchi para niños