Nintendo is a titan in the video game business and beyond, and here's why.
Software
- The Super Mario Bros. franchise is composed of countless games spanning almost every genre in gaming, some of those Spin-Off franchises being cash cows in their own right, all combining to be the best-selling video game franchise in history by a wide margin.
- When it comes to the mainline Platform Game titles, both the 2D and 3D Platform Games are killer apps for their respective consoles. The original Super Mario Bros. is the best-selling 2D platformer of all-time at 58 million, while Super Mario Odyssey is the best-selling 3D platformer of all-time at 20 million. In fact, the top ten best-selling platformers of all-time are all Super Mario games.
- Mario Kart is the most successful Racing Game series of all-time, with four of its entries being the best-selling games in the genre, rivaled only by the more realistic Gran Turismo games. This segment of the Mario franchise exploded in popularity with Mario Kart DS, with the most successful entry to-date being Mario Kart 8, which has sold a collective 44 million copies by 2021 between the Wii U and Nintendo Switch versions.
- The franchise has now conquered big screens the world over with The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which has grossed over $1 billion worldwide, making it the most successful video game movie at the time of release. Even Shigeru Miyamoto himself was surprised by the movie's success.
- The Legend of Zelda holds a very comfortable third place to Mario and Pokemon, and has received lots of attention over the years in the form of a cartoon, a Musou spinoff, guest appearances in Mario Kart and Soulcalibur II, and much more. Of special note is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the highest-selling game in the franchise at nearly 30 million units sold, thanks to being the launch title of the Nintendo Switch - and it has often been said that having a Zelda game during the launch period of a Nintendo console is an even bigger boon than having a Mario game.
- There's also Kirby, which like Zelda managed to extend beyond video games with its own line of merchandise and animated spinoff Kirby: Right Back at Ya! (and one better received than The Legend of Zelda cartoon), and also permanent Kirby Café locations in Japan!
- Pokémon started out as a JRPG that Nintendo didn't have much faith in, but within a few months, it gained an insane amount of momentum that soon turned it into the biggest multi-media franchise of all-time. By the turn of the millennium, Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures Inc. (the joint owners of the franchise) were forced to make an entirely new company dedicated to managing the brand, which had already spawned a trading card game, an animated series, several manga, spin-off games, and all kinds of merchandise. By the time the series hit its 25th anniversary, it had received a second burst of overwhelming popularity thanks to mobile game Pokémon GO and saw an an American live-action movie based on one of its many spin-off games. In March 2021, the franchise reported as record $1.1 billion in sales over the previous year, with the video games at the center of the series only contributing towards a small fraction of that.
- Super Smash Bros. was always a money-printing Fighting Game series, with every entry being among the best-selling games for their respective systems. However, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate went further than every previous installment by becoming the best-selling title in the genre's entire history, selling 15.71 million units in less than a year (surpassing all versions of previous record-holder Street Fighter II combined).
- Animal Crossing is one of Nintendo's more unassuming series, so few expected it become a cash cow franchise for the developer. But yet it is. In its home country of Japan, merchandise is released by the truckloads. New Leaf was a Killer App for the Nintendo 3DS globally, becoming the sixth best-selling game for the system, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons would surpass all expectations, as the general boost that video game sales got from the COVID-19 Pandemic resulted in it selling over 32 million copies in a single year to become the second best-selling game for the Nintendo Switch behind only Mario Kart 8.
- Splatoon was a surprise success when the first game released on the Wii U, selling a million copies worldwide in under a month and taking Japan by storm. The sequel, Splatoon 2, would be one of the first games announced for the Nintendo Switch, and go on to be the first game to sell over two million copies in Japan in almost a decade; years later, Splatoon 3 would sell 3.45 million in its Japanese opening weekend, becoming the best-selling launch of any game in the region by a wide margin. Each Splatoon game has spent a year or two as a mainstay in the country's weekly Top 10 sales charts, and outside the games, Splatoon would quickly see the release of its own manga, several virtual idol concerts, and a mountain of merchandise that rivals Kirby.
- Fire Emblem: In Japan, the series had been this since Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, but wouldn't hit its stride outside of Japan until Fire Emblem: Awakening debuted on the Nintendo 3DS. The mainline titles would steadily see more and more international success, while Fire Emblem Heroes would become Nintendo's first big hit in the smartphone gaming market. While not as recognizable as Mario, Zelda, or Pokémon, the franchise has nonetheless become a moneymaker for Nintendo and Intelligent Systems.
- Monolith Soft has been around since 1999, but their largest success and most recognizable titles are the Xenoblade Chronicles games (2010-ongoing), published and developed while under Nintendo's ownership. 3 in particular ended up outselling Definitive Edition within the first two months of release, while 2 is their bestselling game at nearly 2.5 million units sold.
Hardware
- The Game Boy and Nintendo DS lines of hardware fall under this trope too, with regular small upgrades (Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Advance SP) in addition to their successors whose games are incompatible with older versions (Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance). The DS in particular is the best-selling handhold console of all time. In Japan alone, it sold more than 32 million units: Japan's population is a little under 130 million people, meaning approximately 1 in 4 Japanese people had at one point in life owned a DS or enough people have bought multiples to make up for it. While the Nintendo 3DS hasn't been anywhere near as successful, it still became a major success after a price drop and the arrival of more popular games.
- The Wii too. They managed to get 26 million units out of a bunch of minigames by offering a free controller with it. The Wii game series (which started with Wii Sports) became only the third video game franchise to surpass two hundred million copies, and is currently number five on the best-selling video game franchises list, behind Mario, Pokémon, Call of Duty, and Grand Theft Auto.
- The Nintendo Switch. After the Wii U failed hard, most people weren't too optimistic about the future of Nintendo and its next console. Yet, the Switch took the gaming world by storm; selling 2.76 million units in its first month alone (surpassing the 2 million objective Nintendo targeted). The console would wind up outselling most other Nintendo consoles with each passing year, soon becoming Nintendo's most successful home console and their third-most successful piece of hardware overall behind only the original Game Boy and Nintendo DS. Many things can be attributed to this return to form, but it is generally agreed that it is due to better marketing, and a strong line up of games from the very start, featuring games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey in its first year, alongside many other high-profile games, especially third-party, as shown by games like Doom (2016) and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim all coming in 2017.
