A long tradition, great successes and enthusiastic followers worldwide - Nintendo is one of the best known and most popular companies in the field of video games. However, in terms of sales figures, competitors have now overtaken the company. After failing to repeat the successes of Wii and Nintendo DS, the company is now pursuing new strategies.

Nintendo and the revolution at the beginning of the millennium

On September 16, 2005, Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo since 2002, takes the stage at the Tokyo Game Show and presents a machine codenamed "Revolution," Nintendo's next game console. For the first time, the public has the opportunity to see the innovative concept: The controller resembles a remote control, recognizes movements and thus enables intuitive control. Expectations are high, after all Nintendo is under a lot of pressure at this point: The predecessor GameCube has only sold around 20 million units, while the competing PlayStation 2 is breaking records with 157 million units. After initial skepticism from the press and gamers, it quickly turns out that Nintendo's math works out: the Wii becomes the company's most successful stationary console, selling over 100 million units and dominating the software charts worldwide.

Nintendo: Successful with consoles and handhelds

When the company first enters the market in the 1980s with the NES, the industry recovers from a massive sales slump. Gradually, Nintendo conquers a near monopoly with quality and innovative gameplay - for a long time, the company's name is synonymous with the term game console. The Game Boy also contributed to this with almost 120 million consoles sold. The Japanese company is a special case in the gaming world: It develops both the hardware - stationary consoles and portable handhelds - and its own software with game series such as Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong. With Wii and Nintendo DS selling over 154 million, the company is once again the market leader in the early 2010s.

The new competitors: smartphones and tablets

Expectations are correspondingly high when, after the highest sales in the company's history, Nintendo first releases the portable 3DS in 2011 and the stationary Wii U game console in 2012. But sales figures are far below Nintendo's estimates, forcing the company's management to drastically lower the price of the 3DS after just a few months. For many experts who use deposit exness, the new competitors are responsible for the sluggish sales, as they are taking away Nintendo's traditionally most important customers - families and children: With smartphones and tablets, Apple and Google are entering the gaming market and offering more alternatives in terms of entertainment. Compared to Xbox One and PlayStation 4, the Wii U is also flopping with only over 10 million consoles sold - a historic low.