User:FrostFairBlade/sandbox/Hiroshi Yamauchi

Hiroshi Yamauchi (山内溥) was a Japanese businessman and the third president of Nintendo, joining the company in 1949 until stepping down on 24 May 2002, being subsequently succeeded by Satoru Iwata. During his 53-year tenure, Yamauchi transformed Nintendo from a hanafuda card-making company that had been active solely in Japan into a multi-billion-dollar video game publisher and global conglomerate. He was the great-grandson of Fusajiro Yamauchi, Nintendo's first president and founder.

In April 2013, Forbes estimated Yamauchi's net worth at $2.1 billion; he was the 13th richest person in Japan and the 491st richest in the world. In 2008, Yamauchi was Japan's wealthiest person with a fortune at that time estimated at $7.8 billion. At the time of his death, Yamauchi was the largest shareholder at Nintendo.

Early life

 * Yamauchi was born on 7 November 1927 in Kyoto
 * He was born to Shikanojo Inaba and his wife, Kimi Yamauchi
 * He is the great-grandson of Nintendo founder Fusajiro Yamauchi.
 * Inaba came from a family of craftsmen
 * Due to the family of his mother having no male heirs, Inaba took on his wife's surname
 * However, his father abandoned the family when Yamauchi was five years old, so he was instead sent to live with his grandparents, Sekiryo Kaneda and his wife, Tei
 * In 1940, Yamauchi went to a preparatory school in Kyoto, but when World War II started, he went to go work in a military factory
 * Following the war, he studied law at Waseda University, and entered into an arranged marriage with Michiko Inaba

Career at Nintendo

 * Yamauchi's career at Nintendo began when Kaneda suffered a stroke in 1948
 * Since Yamauchi was the first son since Fusajiro, he would become the heir of the company
 * Yamauchi accepted the position as long as several conditions were met, such as forcing Kaneda to fire Yamauchi's cousin so that he would be the only heir of Nintendo
 * In 1949, at the age of 22, Yamauchi became the third president of Nintendo
 * His appointment rankled the existing longtime employees, who were concerned about Yamauchi's youth and lack of business experience; in response, Yamauchi fired the employees loyal to his grandfather who he thought might challenge his authority

Expansion

 * Yamauchi saw that one of his factory workers, Gunpei Yokoi, had made an extendible arm toy
 * He asked Yokoi to turn his invention into a marketable product for the upcoming Christmas season
 * Yokoi added a set of cups and ping-pong balls for children to stack; the Ultra Hand ending up selling 1.4 million units
 * Yamauchi created a Games division at Nintendo in 1970

Seattle Mariners owner

 * In January 1992, Yamauchi announced that his family would join a Seattle ownership group to buy the Mariners for $100 million
 * This proposal was opposed by baseball officials including MLB commissioner Fay Vincent, who took issue with an American team being owned by a non-North American entity
 * On June 12, 1992, MLB approved the sale of the Mariners to the ownership group; the team owners voted 25-1 in favor of the sale
 * Yamauchi remained uninterested in baseball, never attending a single Mariners game throughout his ownership tenure

Personal life

 * Yamauchi was married to Michiko Inaba
 * He had three children: a son named Katsuhito, and two girls, Yuko and Fujiko
 * Katsuhito worked in Nintendo's advertising department
 * Inaba died on July 29, 2012; her cause of death was undisclosed to the public
 * Yamauchi did not play games or sports, though he did enjoy Go in his free time

Philanthropy

 * In 2010, Yamauchi majorly funded an eight-floor 82,000 square-foot cancer treatment center in Kyoto, donating nearly all of the ¥7.5 billion needed to build the facility

Legacy

 * Yamauchi is treated as a visionary who helped guide Nintendo to industry dominance and helped oversee some of the most important moments in video game history
 * Yamauchi is remembered for his belief that video games should be focused around creativity instead of technological capability
 * He strongly believed that players only cared about whether games were fun or not, and was critical of hardware manufacturers and game developers for placing too much emphasis on graphical fidelity
 * When The New York Times asked him about the Nintendo 64's lack of launch titles in 1996, Yamauchi said that it was preferable to flooding the market with a barrage of potentially mediocre games and damaging players' trust; he reiterated that developers must create new gameplay experiences to keep consumers happy
 * In a 2001 interview with The Nikkei, he said that consoles like the GameCube should be priced as cheaply as possible because consumers only care about the software
 * Even in retirement, Yamauchi helped influence the direction of the Nintendo DS by suggesting the handheld device have two screens
 * He described his principles as "originality" or "surprise", and viewed philosophies surrounding incremental progress (such as kaizen) with disdain
 * Satoru Iwata: "He couldn't stand making the same kind of toy the other guy was making so whatever you showed him, you knew he was going to ask, 'How is this different from what everybody else is doing?' The worst way to answer was to tell him, 'It's not different, it's just a little better.' He'd be furious. He was very clear on just how foolish that attitude was for a toy company. So in that sense, 'Do something different from the other guy!' is deeply engrained in our DNA."
 * Yamauchi's philosophy would continue to shape Nintendo long after his retirement; The Guardian cites the Wii's use of motion controls and cheaper price point as an example
 * Current Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa noted in a 2021 interview that the company is still influenced by the principles of both Yamauchi and Iwata, saying that "it was Yamauchi who laid the foundation of our universal way of thinking and the foundation of Nintendo today."
 * However, in the years following Yamauchi's death, Nintendo chose to move away from his managerial style, opting for a more collaborative governing process where decisions were not solely made by individual leaders
 * Characterized as a "stubborn, hard-headed man" who "ruled Nintendo with an iron hand", he was known to be a tough businessman who demanded a lot from his employees and was difficult to please
 * Henk Rogers recalls: "He was tough as nails and quick to reach a decision [...] When he did, everybody fell in line. He was a difficult man to please. If you publicly disagreed with him, your days were numbered."
 * Yamauchi disliked formally written corporate philosophy, opting to verbally communicate his ideas about Nintendo to his subordinates
 * Legacy
 * In 2016, Yamauchi was inducted into the Consumer Technology Hall of Fame under the title "Video Game Futurist"
 * Yamauchi is portrayed by Togo Igawa in Tetris (2023), a film depicting Henk Rogers' attempt to acquire the rights to the titular game for the Game Boy