Saturday, October 21, 2017

Nintendo Company Report 1993

In the days before the World Wide Web allowed companies to easily disseminate information, the main way to share company details was through print.  The document shown here is an example of this. It was aimed at the financial market in Japan: business journalists, shareholders and people interested to acquire stock in the publicly listed company.

Nintendo Company Report 1993 (front cover)

Unlike Nintendo's more recent artfully designed colorful Company Guides aimed at prospected employees, the design is business-like, with a glossy grey cover with "NINTENDO COMPANY REPORT 1993" and the Nintendo logo printed on the front in shiny silver.


The report starts with a foreword by company president Hiroshi Yamauchi (山内溥), in which he lists a number of sales highlights as well as the company's commitment to provide the best digital entertainment through a combination of hardware and software.


The next section provides an overview of the company's 104 year history. The color bars at the top use the iconic color scheme from the Super Famicom, Nintendo's most recent release.


This color scheme returns on the next spread that shows the company achievements, highlighting the hardware and software sales for Nintendo's three video game platforms at the time: Famicom (NES), Gameboy and Super Famicom (SNES).


The information listed is for units sold up to December 1992.

Units sold (since)Hardware (Japan)Hardware (abroad)Software (Japan)Software (abroad)
Famicom (1983)
NES (1985)
18,000,00041,750,000221,930,000265,120,000
Gameboy (1989)8,430,00020,520,00053,510,00089,060,000
Super Famicom (1990)
SNES (1991)
7,390,00011,640,00049,650,00043,490,000

Truly mind-boggling numbers. Famicom and NES total nearly half a billion games together (487 million to be exact)!

The Famicom (and NES) sales had plateaued at this stage at almost 60 million units sold. The sales numbers for the newer Super Famicom (and SNES) would still increase significantly from the 32 million at this point in time, to close to 50 million at end the console's life cycle.

The Gameboy also had plenty of life ahead, its sales invigorated by the launch of the Gameboy Pocket and Gameboy Color in 1996 and 1998, respectively.