Nintendo: The Formula for Creating "Wonder" -- Mini Series #1

I’ve been reading 任天堂「驚き」を生む方程式 (roughly, Nintendo: The Formula for Creating “Wonder”). The book explores the company’s innovative spirit and how, even during economic turmoil, Nintendo continued to create hardware and software that worked in synergy. It also highlights how Nintendo built an environment where in-house developers could push hardware to its limits and create exciting new stories and adventures for major IPs like Mario, Zelda, and Pokémon.

プロローグ──「100年に1度」に揺らがず

Prologue — Unwavering in the Face of a “Once-in-a-Century” Crisis

In the prologue, the author discusses the 2008 economic crisis, when major U.S. securities firms such as Lehman Brothers collapsed, plunging the global economy into turmoil. Japan was no exception. Around early 2009, major brands like Toyota, Nissan, Panasonic, Hitachi, Toshiba, and Sony all reported serious profit losses, often in the hundreds of billions of yen. The book describes this period as a harsh winter—one that chilled to the bone, with no end in sight.

Yet Nintendo was making history.

March 2009 became one of the company’s most memorable periods. The Nintendo DS reached the 100 million unit milestone in just over four years, becoming one of the fastest-selling portable systems ever. The Wii surpassed 50 million units sold within three years and broke the pace previously set by Sony Computer Entertainment’s PlayStation 2 as a home console benchmark.

How did Nintendo achieve this? What was the secret?

Even today, the Wii and DS era is remembered fondly by many who grew up with those systems. Some experts suggest that gaming as an industry is relatively resilient during recessions. But if that were the full explanation, what about Sony? Sony was (and is) a gaming giant, powered by the PS1 and PS2—platforms that once overshadowed Nintendo and caused real competitive pressure.

Maybe Nintendo’s success came from hard strategic reflection after the Nintendo 64 and GameCube years. Whatever the exact reason, this book attempts to reveal some of the principles Nintendo has quietly demonstrated in product development—especially its mechanism for creating “surprise” and “wonder,” a philosophy deeply embedded in the company since its earliest days.

This series will be a set of brief recaps from the book, along with my own thoughts on how this philosophy of surprise and wonder continues to shape Nintendo today—especially with the success of the Switch and its successor, even amid the current difficult economic conditions of today.