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Nintendo makes video games and the consoles people play them on, selling both its own famous games and hardware to players around the world.
Nintendo is the Japanese company behind Super Mario, Zelda, and Pokémon, and it makes both the games and the machines you play them on. Its main product today is the Switch, a console you can hook to your TV or carry around like a handheld. People buy the hardware, then keep buying games for years afterward — and that second part is where the real money lives.
The business works like a cycle. Nintendo sells a console, often at a thin profit or even a loss, then earns fat margins on its own games, which it controls and prices itself. It also takes a cut when other publishers sell games for its machines, and it runs a paid online service called Switch Online that brings in steady subscription money. In the year ended March 2024, the company brought in roughly 1.67 trillion yen, helped by a huge hit movie and strong game sales. Its biggest edge is a library of characters people grew up with — Mario and friends sell consoles in a way raw specs never could. Nintendo is famously conservative with money. It sits on a large pile of cash, rarely makes big acquisitions, and pays a steady dividend while buying back shares now and then. That caution has kept it alive for over a century — it started in 1889 making playing cards — and it has repeatedly chosen to do its own strange thing rather than follow rivals. The Switch succeeded with a gimmick, but the machine is now old, and the company's next console is the big question hanging over it.
The real risks are simple: hits depend on creativity, and a flop hurts. Nintendo also guards its characters fiercely, which sometimes puts it at odds with fans who want to remix or reuse them. Still, few companies own a stable of characters this beloved, and that is why it can sell a $300 console and then sell you the same game twice at full price.
Saved answer · last researched 22 Oct 2026