In an era when corporate crises typically trigger hasty pivots and pink slips, Nintendo just quietly crossed the $100 billion valuation mark by doing something downright revolutionary: sticking to its guns.
Let me say that again. A 130-year-old company that started selling playing cards during the Meiji era has reached tech titan status without following a single page from the modern corporate rescue playbook.
Just a decade ago? Nintendo was practically being measured for a coffin. The Wii U had flopped spectacularly. Smartphones were supposedly hammering the final nail into dedicated gaming devices. The company was bleeding money—three straight years of losses that had analysts writing obituaries rather than forecasts.
I've been enjoying gaming since the Nintendo 64 era, and I remember those dark days vividly. The financial press was merciless. "The next Sega" became a common refrain, suggesting Nintendo would soon abandon hardware entirely and resign itself to publishing Mario games for PlayStation and Xbox.
The standard corporate response to this kind of existential threat is practically algorithmic: announce "strategic restructuring" (fire people), "focus on core competencies" (fire more people), and start "exploring strategic alternatives" (prepare to be swallowed by a larger fish).
Nintendo's then-CEO Satoru Iwata took a different approach. He slashed his own salary by 50%, protected his workforce, and doubled down on the company's quirky, often frustratingly stubborn approach to gaming.
This is... not what business schools teach.
There's something fascinating happening here that I'll call the "patient capital advantage." While most publicly traded companies dance to the quarterly earnings rhythm, certain organizations maintain a long-term orientation that can look downright delusional—until suddenly it doesn't. Nintendo embodies this approach. They don't chase trends so much as they wait for trends to circle back to their fundamental beliefs about what makes games fun.
When shareholders demanded Nintendo dive into mobile gaming—you know, the very market supposedly killing their hardware business—the company did the corporate equivalent of a begrudging head nod. Sure, they released some mobile titles, but their heart wasn't in it. (Anyone remember Miitomo? Didn't think so.)
What they were actually doing was buying time while developing what would become the Switch, a "hybrid" console that essentially said: "What if smartphones aren't actually the ideal gaming form factor after all?"
It's like watching someone nod politely at a dinner party while their crypto-obsessed friend explains why NFTs will replace museums, knowing full well this moment will pass.
And pass it did. The Switch is now hovering near the PlayStation 2's all-time sales record, traditionally considered the most successful console ever. The Mario movie—which, let's be honest, could have been an absolute trainwreck—became 2023's most profitable film. Nintendo's intellectual property has expanded into theme parks, merchandise, and a growing pipeline of animated features.
All while stubbornly remaining... Nintendo.
Look, there's a broader lesson here about corporate identity and patience. In an age where companies are constantly told to "disrupt themselves" before someone else does, Nintendo chose a radically different path: understand what makes your company special, and bet that this uniqueness will eventually become valuable again, even when Wall Street analysts are screaming otherwise.
Consider Disney's expensive streaming struggles, or Netflix's flailing gaming ambitions. The corporate impulse to chase whatever seems hot often leads to expensive strategic zigzags that destroy more value than they create.
I'm not suggesting every struggling company should just cross its arms and wait for the market to come back around. Sometimes declining sales really do signal fundamental changes in consumer behavior. But there's something refreshing—even inspiring—about a company that essentially says, "This is who we are, and we believe that still matters," and then has the patience to prove it.
Nintendo's success also highlights another recurring theme I've noticed covering markets: the tendency to mistake cyclical challenges for permanent decline. The "death of dedicated gaming hardware" narrative wasn't describing some irreversible technological shift—it was mostly just capturing a temporary market contraction between console generations.
By maintaining course through this rough period (while making tactical adjustments), Nintendo positioned themselves perfectly for the next upswing.
The truly remarkable thing? Nintendo hit this $100 billion milestone without fundamentally changing their approach to game development or abandoning their hardware business. They didn't transform into a service company, didn't embrace the monetization strategies that dominate much of the gaming industry, and didn't outsource their manufacturing to focus on higher-margin software.
They just kept making Nintendo products, confident that Nintendo products would eventually find their audience again.
In a market obsessed with disruption and transformation, sometimes the most revolutionary strategy is simply having the courage of your convictions.
Not bad for a century-old playing card company, eh?
