Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel.

Nintendo developed into a video game company, becoming one of the most influential in the industry, and Japan's third most valuable listed company, with a market value of over US$85 billion. Besides video games, Nintendo of America is the majority owner of the Seattle Mariners Major League Baseball team.

The name Nintendo can be roughly translated from Japanese to English as "leave luck to heaven". As of October 18, 2010, Nintendo has sold over 565 million hardware units and 3.4 billion software units.

Write up Courtesy of Wikipedia