Hiroshi Yamauchi is a Japanese businessman. As of March 2012, Yamauchi is the 12th richest person in Japan and 491st richest in the world, having a net worth of approximately $2.5 billion.
Education
Yamauchi was sent to a preparatory school in Kyoto at age twelve and had planned to study law or engineering but World War II disrupted his studies. Since he was too young to fight he was put to work in a military factory. Once the war ended in 1945 Yamauchi went to Waseda University to study law.
He didn`t recive a degree, because he had to leave University for work.
Career
In 1949, Yamauchi's grandfather, the incumbent president of Nintendo, suffered a stroke. As he had no other immediate successor, he asked Yamauchi to come immediately to Nintendo to assume the position of president. He had to leave Waseda University to do so. Yamauchi would only accept the position if he were the only family member working at Nintendo. Reluctantly, Yamauchi's grandfather agreed, and died shortly thereafter. Under the agreement, his older cousin had to be fired. Due to his young age and total lack of any management experience, most employees did not take Yamauchi seriously and many resented him. Soon after taking over, he had to deal with a strike by factory employees who expected him to cave in easily. Instead, he asserted his authority by firing many long-time employees who questioned his authority. He had the company name changed to Nintendo Karuta and established its new headquarters in Kyoto. Yamauchi led Nintendo in a "notoriously imperialistic style".[5] He was the sole judge of potential new products, and only a product that appealed to him and his keen instincts went on the market.
e was the first to introduce the plastic Western playing card into the Japanese market. Western playing cards were still a novelty in Japan and the public associated them with Western-styled gambling games such as poker and bridge. Most gambling activities were technically illegal by default with only a few legally sanctioned exceptions (horse racing, pachinko and lottery). Therefore, the market for anything which was associated with gambling, including Hanafuda, was limited. Yamauchi's first "hit" came when he made a licensing agreement with Walt Disney in 1959 for his plastic playing cards. Nintendo targeted its playing cards as a tool for party games that the whole family could enjoy, a foreshadowing of the company's approach going into the 21st century. Disney's tie-in was made towards that end. Nintendo's Disney playing card was also accompanied by a small, thin booklet with many tutorials for different card games. The strategy succeeded and the product sold 600,000 units in one year, soon gracing Nintendo with the domination of Japanese playing card market. With this success, Yamauchi once again changed the company name to Nintendo Company Limited and took the company public (listed on stock market) and became the chairman. He then decided to travel to the U.S. to visit the United States Playing Card Company, the world's biggest manufacturer of playing cards. Upon arriving in Cincinnati, Yamauchi was disappointed to see a small-scale office and factory. This led to the realization that card manufacturing was an extremely limited venture.
Upon his return to Japan, Yamauchi decided to diversify the company. Some of the new areas he ventured into included a taxi company called Daiya, a love hotel with rooms rented by the hour, and individually portioned instant rice. All of these ventures eventually failed and brought the company into the brink of bankruptcy. However, one day, Yamauchi spotted a factory engineer named Gunpei Yokoi playing with a simple extendable claw, something Yokoi made to amuse himself during his break. Yamauchi ordered Yokoi to develop the extendable claw into a proper product. The product was named Urutora Hando (Ultra Hand) and was an instant hit. It was then that Yamauchi decided to move Nintendo’s focus into toy making. With an already established distribution system into department stores for its playing cards, the transition was a natural one for Nintendo. Yamauchi created a new department called Games and Setup, manned initially by only Yokoi and another employee who looked after the finances, and was situated in a warehouse in Kyoto for the purpose of research and development. Gunpei Yokoi was solely assigned to develop new products. Yokoi utilised his degree in engineering by developing what is now known as electric toys such as the Love Tester and a light gun using solar cells for targets. These electric toys were quite a novelty in the 60s when most other toys were simple in origin, such as toy blocks or dolls. Eventually Nintendo succeeded in establishing itself as a major player in the toy market.
Yamauchi realized that technological breakthroughs in the electronic industry meant that electronics could be incorporated into entertainment products since the prices were decreasing. Atari and Magnavox were already selling gaming devices for use with television sets. Yamauchi negotiated a license with Magnavox to sell its game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. After hiring several Sharp Electronics employees, Nintendo launched the Color TV Game 6 in Japan, which was followed by several revisions and updates of this series.
Yamauchi decided to expand Nintendo into the United States in order to cash in on the growing American arcade market. He hired his son-in-law Minoru Arakawa to head the new American operation. When Japanese hits such as Radar Scope, Space Fever and Sheriff did not achieve the same success in the United States, Yamauchi turned to designer Shigeru Miyamoto's pet project, Donkey Kong, which became a smash hit.
Yamauchi infused Nintendo with a unique, industrial development process. He instituted three separate research and development units, which competed with one another and aimed for innovation. This system fostered a high degree of both unusual and successful gadgets. Yokoi, who headed R&D 1, created the first portable LCD video game featuring a microprocessor called the Game & Watch. Although the Game & Watch was successful, Yamauchi wanted something that was cheap enough that most could buy it and yet something unique enough so that they dominated the market for as long as possible.
On May 31, 2002, Yamauchi stepped down as president of Nintendo and was succeeded by the head of Nintendo's Corporate Planning Division, Satoru Iwata. Yamauchi subsequently became the chairman of Nintendo's board of directors. He finally left the board on June 29, 2005, due to his age, and because he felt that he was leaving the company in good hands. Yamauchi also refused to accept his retirement pension, which was reported to be around $9 million to $14 million, feeling that Nintendo could put it to better use. He is also Nintendo's largest shareholder despite stepping down. He still retains a 10% share in Nintendo as of 2008. He is currently the 12th richest man in Japan due to his shares in Nintendo since their success with the Wii and Nintendo DS consoles.[citation needed] He donated the majority of the 7.5 billion yen used to build a new cancer treatment center in Kyoto. Following the announcement of the Wii U and the price cut of the Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo shares fell to 12,290 yen, the biggest drop since 2009. Yamauchi is estimated to have lost $312 million USD (approximately 24.2 billion yen).