Nintendo Magic: Winning the Videogame Wars |  | Author: Osamu Inoue
Creator: Paul Tuttle Starr
Publisher: Vertical
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
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Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 142,230
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 224
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.7 x 1
ISBN: 1934287229
Dewey Decimal Number: 338
EAN: 9781934287224
ASIN: 1934287229
Publication Date: April 27, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Back in the 80s, Nintendo ruled the home-entertainment market with the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). But then rival Sony introduced PlayStation, which featured advancements and cutting-edge technology that put Nintendo's Super-NES to shame. Nintendo quickly lost its dominant market share to Sony and found itself floundering. In 2006, Nintendo released Wii at the same time Sony introduced its highly-anticipated and much-vaunted PlayStation III and Microsoft's XBox 360. Wii's David defeated PlayStation's Goliath, inversely echoing the SNES/PlayStation outcome of a decade previous. Nintendo Magic: Winning the Videogame Wars is the story of what went right, discussing the business strategies and marketing savvy that took on the mighty Sony and won.
Topics include:
How where you put your company is just as important as how you run it: being in Kyoto
From work force to policies, why Nintendo's "just enough" attitude succeeds
Why the ability to read a balance sheet is overrated
Respect seniority but approve huge R&D budgets for talented junior employees
Allowing maximum communication between disparate divisions (hardware and software)
Enlarging the pie: going after casual gamers (The art of mainstreaming)
How the Wii will be the next major household appliance and the DSi will be the cell phone of the future.
Nintendo Magic: Winning the Videogame Wars should serve as a warning to similar powerhouse industries never to understimate the modest competitor. It should occupy the bookshelf of any business person smart enough to know they don't need to be a giant to win.
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| Customer Reviews:
Manufacturer of Smiles May 29, 2010
Derek VanDyke (San Francisco, CA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
For decades, Nintendo has been synonymous with video games. Whether you're talking to a casual or die-hard gamer, grandparent or child, ask what the first thing is that comes to mind when your hear "video game", and they're likely to respond with "Nintendo" or one of its products. Now, especially, Nintendo is top of many people's minds thanks to the wild success of the Wii and DS. But it wasn't always that way, and that's what makes this book such a compelling read.
More than anything, Nintendo Magic reveals the people, philosophies, and business decisions behind the company's iconic characters and products, and even how it got into the video game business in the first place. Of course it covers the advent of the now iconic DS and Wii, but it just as importantly shows how a company that started out as a manufacturer of traditional Japanese trading cards became the king of a fledgling video game industry, only to fall from heaven at the hands of Sony, and how a shift in leadership and a re-emphasis on core principles allowed it to expand its audience to record-breaking size.
Along the way, a lot of interesting anecdotes are discussed about specific products and people that will particularly please Nintendo fans (like myself) but also give the general reader a more rounded understanding of such a mysterious company. For example, when the original DS was being developed, President Satoru Iwata demanded that it be durable enough to survive repeated falls onto concrete from up to five feet, highlighting Nintendo's obsession with durability. As explained in the book, that fixation on build quality stems from the company's core philosophy that as a toy company, a broken product is an invitation for a customer to never use it again.
As great as the book is, though, a few niggling details persist. Namely, there isn't much organization to the topics discussed, and chapters bounce around from present day to decades prior and beyond. Also, because it was originally written in Japanese, the translation results in some odd phrasing and occasionally bizarre choice of words.
Overall though, Nintendo Magic is a great book that pulls back the curtain on a company that has entertained countless children and adults alike. For nostalgia-seekers, you'll be rewarded with details you never knew about your favorite games and the people behind them. And for business readers, the author has done a thorough job of analyzing the philosophies and decisions that have brought a small company, relative to its competitors, so much success.
Fantastic Epilogue/Prologue to Game Over June 18, 2010
A Customer (Hells Gate, NY United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Books on the inner workings of Nintendo are few and far between. To-date, there have been two : "Game Over Press Start To Continue" by David Sheff and this. This book fills in a number of gaps left present in the "Game Over" book, most notably the underlying psychology and upbringing of former president Yamauchi, who almost never does interviews, and was largely responsible for Nintendo's success, and where Nintendo went after the N64 came out. The two books dovetail with each other so extraordinarily well, that reading one without the other will not present a complete picture of what led to Nintendo's previous and current success. This book also details the blunders along the way in off-shoot enterprises Nintendo tried to venture into to differentiate itself outside of the entertainment industry, which is also valuable information to the aspiring businessman.
Pros :
As far as this specific book is concerned, while the book is haphazard and scatterbrained in terms of what topic is brought up in what order, the actual *content* gives such tremendous insight into the philosophy that is Nintendo, that it is to any game developer or game businessman (or Nintendo fanboy) literal GOLD in book form. The strategies of Miyamoto, Yokoi, Iwata (current president), and Yamauchi (past president) are all here in transparent form. Anyone looking to capitalize on the mentalities that led to these men becoming the legends that they are will love this book. In succinct form, they, their personal philosophies, guiding principles, and lives are all mentioned and elaborated on with piercing consideration. Hows and whys of Nintendo's product releases (with main focus on Wii and DS-era) are covered in exhaustive detail. It's exceedingly rare that books like this, with this wealth of information and the joy that is Nintendo, are captured and bottled up into a nice volume like this. Get it while the getting is good.
Cons :
There are some *minor* mistakes in translation which will be obvious in their intended wording and there is at least one mistake I noticed on page 153 in a chart that reads millions of yen but should read *billions* of yen. The only negative I can really cite the book on is the cover has a weird waxy film over it that wears away as the book is handled, debatably Japanese in it's clear indication that the book has been read/devirginized. That's the best I can come up with for negatives. That's really it. Minimal in the absolute extreme.
Final analysis :
One of the best books on the business of and success in the game industry ever.
Very Informative August 20, 2010
SGR
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This was a book I bought with semi high expectations, and was pleasantly surprised. The book is extremely informative, explaining many of Nintendo's business strategies and the reasons and origins behind them, and does a good job of explaining the company's recent success and the famous figures at Nintendo. I really enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to just about any one interested in Nintendo and how the company came to be. The only flaw I found was that the book can be a little too pro Nintendo, to the point where it makes you wonder how such a great company made such great mistakes with the Nintendo 64 and Nintendo Gamecube. But regardless, the book does an exceptional job at showing more light on the company we know so little about, and that everyone should know more of.
great! August 6, 2010
Video Game History (United States)
Hot, insightful book that should not be missed by anyone who cares about
video games, and video game history.
Video Game History is a very important thing, and we are at the birth of it. Many books like this will be valuable in the future as
we are seeing the birth of a new generation. Much of this information will be lost unless we take care of it!
5 stars.
 Interesting Read for fans of Video Game History May 30, 2010
Matt Piersall (Austin, TX)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I recommend this book if your interested in understanding the "Nintendo Perspective". "Game Over" was a much deeper historical look at Nintendo (I recommend reading both) but due to the fact that Game Over was written in 1992 its very dated.
"Nintendo Magic" is obviously incredibly a pro Nintendo read although it there are a few chapters that really face some core issues (mainly with Japans slow adoption to change). This book definitely made me respect Iwata much more and understand the weight at which the new guard at Nintendo in many ways has made the games industry a much more profitable and better landscape.
Overall great read if you've got an airplane ride you need to fill with something.
-mtcs
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