Hiroshi Yamauchi (Japanese: 山内 溥; November 7, 1927 – September 19, 2013) was the third president of Nintendo. He held this position from April 25, 1949, to May 24, 2002. He was also the main owner of the Seattle Mariners from 1992 until his death. Before working at Nintendo, he had strong family ties to the company. His great-grandfather, Fusajiro Yamauchi, started Nintendo and was its first president. His grandfather, Sekiryo Kaneda, was the second president. During Yamauchi’s time as president, Nintendo changed from a Japanese company that made hanafuda cards into a large global company focused on making video game consoles and publishing video games. Because of this success and his ownership of most of Nintendo’s shares, he became very wealthy. In 2008, he was Japan’s richest person, with an estimated net worth of $7.8 billion. In 2013, his net worth had decreased to $2.1 billion, but he was still the 13th richest person in Japan and the 491st richest person in the world.
Early life
Yamauchi was born in Kyoto to Shikanojo Inaba and Kimi. When he was five years old, his father left his family. His mother, who found it hard to care for him, gave custody of Yamauchi to her parents, including Sekiryo Kaneda, president of Nintendo. At age twelve, Yamauchi attended a preparatory school in Kyoto. During World War II, he worked in a military factory, and his plans to study law or engineering were interrupted. After the war ended, he studied law at Waseda University and married Michiko Inaba. Because his father was not around, Yamauchi's grandparents arranged the marriage.
Nintendo career
In 1948, while Yamauchi was studying at Waseda University, Kaneda had a stroke. Since no one had been chosen to lead Nintendo after Kaneda, Yamauchi was asked to take over immediately. Yamauchi agreed, but only if he was the only family member working at Nintendo. Because of this, his older cousin was removed from the company. Many employees did not respect Yamauchi because he was older and had no experience managing a business. This changed when he fired long-time workers who challenged his authority during a factory strike. Yamauchi led Nintendo, which he renamed Nintendo Karuta and moved to a new location in Kyoto. Video game journalist Steven L. Kent described his leadership style as "notoriously imperialistic." He alone decided which new products to approve, choosing only those that interested him.
Yamauchi introduced Western-style playing cards with plastic backs to Japan. In 1959, he released a pack of officially licensed cards featuring Disney characters, along with a booklet explaining card games. Although these cards were linked to gambling, which was illegal in Japan, 600,000 packs sold within a year. This helped Nintendo become the leading company in Japan’s playing card market.
Yamauchi took Nintendo, which he renamed Nintendo Company Limited, public, becoming its first chairman. After visiting the United States Playing Card Company, he realized Nintendo needed to grow in new ways. He tried making an instant rice product and owning a taxi company called Daiya, but these efforts failed, nearly causing the company to go bankrupt. In 1966, Yamauchi noticed a toy called the Ultra Hand, which Gunpei Yokoi, a factory engineer, was playing with during a break. Yamauchi decided to enter the toy industry, using Nintendo’s existing distribution networks. Yokoi was moved to a new department called Games and Setup, where he created more toys. Nintendo became known for products like the Love Tester, an electronic toy that claimed to measure romantic feelings, and a light gun that used solar cells for targets.
Many of Nintendo’s toys included electronic parts. Seeing how technology improved and became cheaper, and noticing the rise of arcade games and video game consoles like the Magnavox Odyssey, Yamauchi realized electronics could be central to Nintendo’s future. Nintendo became the Japanese distributor of the Odyssey and created a unit called Nintendo Research & Development Department to focus on video games. By the late 1970s, a second unit was formed, with workers hired from Sharp Electronics to develop the Color TV-Game 6, Nintendo’s first console. This setup, described as unique by researcher Steven Boyer, led to competition and innovation. Games like Radar Scope, Space Fever, and Sheriff appeared in arcades, but they were not popular in America until 1981, when Donkey Kong, a project by Shigeru Miyamoto, was released.
In 1980, Nintendo introduced the Game & Watch, a series of portable video games designed by Yokoi. These games used an LCD screen and a microprocessor, which were new at the time. Though the Game & Watch was successful, Yamauchi believed it lacked the depth to be a long-term success. This led to the release in 1983 of the Family Computer, or Famicom, Nintendo’s first console. Nintendo’s R&D units created first-party games. A third and fourth unit were formed in 1980 and 1983. After the video game crash of 1983, which Yamauchi believed was caused by too many low-quality games, he strictly controlled which games could be released and limited third-party publishers to three titles per year. He believed artists, not technicians, created great games, so he made game development easier for others.
Yamauchi’s confidence in the Famicom proved correct. He promised an electronics company that one million units would be ordered within two years, a goal easily met. Outside Japan, the Famicom was renamed the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and redesigned to look less like a video game console. It became a huge success; by 1990, most consoles sold historically were NES or Famicom units.
As the Famicom was still popular, Nintendo began work on a successor, the Super Famicom, which was released in Japan in 1990. It was renamed the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and released in North America in 1991 and Europe in 1992. Nintendo’s popularity was so high that initial stock sold out in three days, and people waited outside stores for days to buy the console. A later attempt, the Virtual Boy, a virtual reality console released in 1995, did not achieve similar success. At a press conference, Yamauchi said he still believed in the system and that Nintendo would continue making games for it.
As the 1990s continued, 3D gaming became more common. Nintendo focused on this trend with the Nintendo 64, a 64-bit console released in 1996. Though praised by critics, it struggled commercially, as attention shifted to Sony’s PlayStation.
For most of the 1990s, Yamauchi’s age did not stop him from leading Nintendo. In 1995, at age 68, he was called "the most feared and respected man in the video game industry" by Next Generation magazine, which noted he still controlled Nintendo. In 1996, Yamauchi publicly considered retiring, saying he could not think of a good replacement. In 1997, he announced he would retire by 2000, when the 64DD, a disk drive for the Nintendo 64, was released.
In 1999, Nintendo announced the development of the successor to the Nintendo 64, codenamed Dolphin. It was released as the GameCube between 2001 and 2002. Unlike the PlayStation 2, which included a DVD player, the GameCube was designed only as a console. Yamauchi believed its focus on being a console, its lower price, and hardware that made game development easier would help it stand out.
On May 24, 2002, Yamauchi resigned as president of Nintendo, returning to the role of chairman of the board. He was succeeded by Satoru Iwata, leader of Nintendo’s Corporate Planning Division. On June 29, 2005, Yamauchi resigned from the board, citing his age and confidence in the company. He refused a retirement pension estimated at $9 to $14 million but remained Nintendo’s largest shareholder. As of 2008, he owned 10% of the company.
In retirement, Yamauchi donated money to build a cancer treatment center in Kyoto and founded Shigureden, a museum of poetry (Ogura Hyakunin Isshu) in Kyoto.
Personal life
In 1950, Inaba had a daughter named Yōko. Yōko later married Minoru Arakawa, who was chosen by Yamauchi to manage Nintendo's American company. Inaba experienced several miscarriages and often faced health problems. In 1957, she gave birth to another daughter, Fujiko, and then a son named Katsuhito. Inaba passed away on July 29, 2012, at the age of 82.
Years after leaving the family, Yamauchi's father returned to visit him. Yamauchi refused to speak with him. When Yamauchi was nearly 30, his father died from a stroke. At the funeral, Yamauchi met his father's wife and their four daughters, whom he had never met before. He felt deep sadness for months, regretting that he had ignored his father, and began visiting his father's grave regularly.
Yamauchi was described as a strict man who focused heavily on business. His children felt he spent more time working at Nintendo than with them. Because he often fired employees who disagreed with him, Henk Rogers, who helped make the Game Boy successful by releasing a version of Tetris, called him a leader who made most decisions alone. Interestingly, despite leading a company that creates video games, Yamauchi rarely played them. One exception was a game called Igo: Kyuu Roban Taikyoku, created by Rogers and based on the board game Go. Yamauchi was also interested in Go, achieving a high level of skill, and enjoyed games using hanafuda cards.
Ownership of the Seattle Mariners
In 1991, the Seattle Mariners were put up for sale. If no local owner was found, the team would be moved to Florida. To stop this, a group of Seattle business leaders created The Baseball Club of Seattle and looked for someone who could provide a large amount of money. When Bill Gates, owner of Microsoft, refused to help, Senator Slade Gorton of Washington, who had worked with Nintendo during Senate hearings about intellectual property theft, reached out to Yamauchi through Howard Lincoln, CEO of Nintendo of America. Yamauchi was grateful to Seattle, where Nintendo of America is based, for its support. He agreed to join the effort, offering $75 million toward a total bid of $125 million. The Mariners were interested, but Major League Baseball opposed the plan, as it would give a Japanese person control of 60% of the team. After pressure from figures like George W. Bush, owner of the Texas Rangers, MLB agreed, but Yamauchi was not allowed to own more than 50% of the voting shares.
As an owner, Yamauchi was not involved in daily decisions, giving his rights to Nintendo of America and never attending a game. The one game he planned to attend, scheduled for Kyoto in 2003, was moved to the United States because of the upcoming Iraq War.
Death
On September 19, 2013, Yamauchi passed away at the age of 85 due to complications from pneumonia. Nintendo released a statement saying its employees were grieving the loss of their former president.