Oh Nintendo. Every time I think I understand you a little bit more, you do something crazy that leads me to believe I don’t know you at all. Your stock is the second highest in Japan (after Toyota, which is absolutely crazy), your former executive officer, Hiroshi Yamauchi, is the richest man in Japan (trust me, there’s a lot of loaded peeps in Nihon), and your console is still flying off of shelves a full year and a half after its launch, all across the world. You’re right – you deserve to be happy, in fact, you deserve to laugh in the faces of all the nay-sayers, because you’ve ensured your place in this little industry of ours for a good few years.
In fact, if there’s one thing I’ve come to learn about you, it’s that you do things your own way. Some may call you a little slow on the uptake, ya know, because you only innovate when you have to (there’s too many examples from the N64 and GC eras here to even mention), but we stick by your side because we know your touch is often the closest thing to magic we’ve ever laid our thumbs on. I mean come on – who else can take a fat Italian plumber and make him a loveable mascot? Develop largely the same games year after year and sell millions of copies each time? Or produce a completely underpowered system, throw on a new hook, and capture an entirely new demographic of gamer? That’s right, only you.
