Origami Superman
Member
Absolutely completely different. Nintendo aside, there's a very good chance there'd be no Playstation nor Xbox if it wasn't for him. I'm surprised / disappointed gaming media aren't covering it a little more.
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Hiroshi Yamauchi dies at 85 (Nikkei)
- Thread starter bernardobri
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Absolutely completely different. Nintendo aside, there's a very good chance there'd be no Playstation nor Xbox if it wasn't for him. I'm surprised / disappointed gaming media aren't covering it a little more.
perfectchaos007
Member
NBC news with Brian Williams just did a 30 second blurb on him on the broadcast. RIP.
The12thGripper
Member
Leave luck to heaven. RIP, man.
alf717
Member
Rest in peace Mr. Yamauchi.
Really good read. Mr. Yamauchi had a rough childhood and yet brought so many smiles to mine.
Really good read. Mr. Yamauchi had a rough childhood and yet brought so many smiles to mine.
Septimus Prime
Member
RIP
FlyingTeacup
Member
rest in peace.
if i have a basement, I would spend a day doing nothing but playing rpg to commemorate this awesome life.
if i have a basement, I would spend a day doing nothing but playing rpg to commemorate this awesome life.
Not surprised in the least, like if we needed more proof the gaming media is a complete joke, even the local newspapers are reporting on it.
twinturbo2
butthurt Heat fan
So, what happens to the Seattle Mariners? Best case scenario is that Mark Cuban buys the team and is Bud Selig's headache now.
See You Next Wednesday
Banned
I wonder if any past Nintendo employes are celebrating right now.
I read that they absolutely hated him when they worked for him & he made working at Nintendo a living hell.
I read that they absolutely hated him when they worked for him & he made working at Nintendo a living hell.
YosemiteHam
Member
RIP
In 2004 NOA took over ownership of the Mariners.
MisterHero
Super Member
He didn't have know about games or design because he was wise enough to leave those issues to people who knew what they were doing (Yokoi, Miyamoto, Iwata, etc.).
He just made sure that they were sustainable and profitable above all else. There are a few publishers today that remember the latter but forget the former.
Well....
He also was responsible for creating NST, responsible for having Digipen on Nintendo's campus for years (which provided NST with a lot of young talent), and fully supported and pushed for Rare being more integrated into the Nintendo family.
I'm okay with Iwata, but I truly feel that his biggest failing so far as President was consolidating the vast majority of software development back to Japan. Arakawa-San was very much against that and was a big fan of globalized Nintendo software development.
But let's be real, we all know who needs to come back to run NOA:
weevles
Member
If anything, Yamauchi was able to find and surround himself with the right creative and technical people at the right time. This serendipity, shrewd business sense and persistence drove Nintendo to revitalize the home video game industry. Funny how far he went despite being so detached from the things his company created.
not_so_special
Banned
its the same as jobs..when you are dead all your past sins seems to evaporate in a mist of fervent love
rip but for me the true legends of nintendo were the developers..these people where the ones who made the games
Yamauchi ranks a lot lower on the asshole tree than Jobs.
Many of the things people bitch about Yamauchi over were things that benefitted gamers. He took a strong line on opposing shovelware which of course pissed off publishers who back in the 80s were eager to shovel out the shit as much as they could shovel out a gem.
Unbelievable. Please: do the rest of us a favor and take this shit somewhere else; it's unsightly.
The shares Yamaguchi had was transferred to NOA in a trust in around 2003/2004. NOA still has those shares, and has been the majority owner of the Seattle Mariners ever since then.
NOA just made Yamaguchi like honorary chairman of the trust or something to be the defacto owner of the Mariners.
Most likely scenario is that NOA still keeps majority ownership and lets Howard Lincoln still run the team.
Shikamaru Ninja
任天å ã® å¿è
Yamauchi turned Nintendo into a video game company. Yamauchi approved several "wacky" and "risky" ideas that became hardware and software. Yamauchi wasn't as conservative and stubborn as some of the posts above fictionally cite, he supposedly was quite the conversationist and believed in giving his employees autonomy and opportunity to present unconventional ideas.
Yamauchi also believed his development teams should compete against each other, and act in complete secrecy.
DrForester
Kills Photobucket
Apologies if this has been answered, but do any of his kids work for the company still? Did he even have kids?
His daughter married Minoru Arakawa, who started up Nintendo of America and ran it for something like a decade and a half. I think he has a son who worked in advertising. I'm not sure of any others.
Yes, he was very famous for this. I actually think that creating EAD gave Miyamoto-San a little too much power in the company. It did create for a tense environment, but I feel that it was much better when there were separate R&D teams who only focused on beating one another at making the best games. That's what really drove a lot of Nintendo's creative juices.
;_;
Maybe this was the disagreement in visions between Yamauchi and Arawaka. Hence why Iwata has the job now. But to be honest, it'll be bloody good for Iwata to follow up on Arakawa's idea.
Oh, and NoA needs a figurehead, as soon as possible. They're a shambles.
Well....
He also was responsible for creating NST, responsible for having Digipen on Nintendo's campus for years (which provided NST with a lot of young talent), and fully supported and pushed for Rare being more integrated into the Nintendo family.
I'm okay with Iwata, but I truly feel that his biggest failing so far as President was consolidating the vast majority of software development back to Japan. Arakawa-San was very much against that and was a big fan of globalized Nintendo software development.
But let's be real, we all know who needs to come back to run NOA:
Maybe this was the disagreement in visions between Yamauchi and Arawaka. Hence why Iwata has the job now. But to be honest, it'll be bloody good for Iwata to follow up on Arakawa's idea.
Oh, and NoA needs a figurehead, as soon as possible. They're a shambles.
I wonder if they still do this, to this day...
Shikamaru Ninja
任天å ã® å¿è
It was Iwata who restructured the R&D and sort of lopsided internal development under Miyamoto / Tezuka.
Nope. They don't. Well the secrecy part is still a yes of course.
Bah. Time to send Arakawa over to NCL for a two years. Lay down the foundations and threaten them with dat 10%.
Yamauchi turned everything he touched to gold.
Find out your maintenance guy tinkers with toys in his spare time? Hire him to make big name toys and eventually the Gameboy.
Some guy brings you puppets during an interview? Assign him to make the arcade game that would launch you into dominating the video game market for a decade or two despite the rest of your company objecting.
He didn't hire talented developers. He saw talent and brought it out in people. People like Miyamoto and Yokoi are still legends, don't get me wrong, but who knows what they'd be doing if a shrewd businessman didn't see greatness in them.
Also, can I get the original source for that "RPG gamers are depressed nerds" thing? I can only find an IGN article that sources a 1999 interview that I can't find. Not that I find it hard to believe but it could be like the "suck my yellow balls" quote.
not_so_special
Banned
you mean the infamous nintendo seal? that worked wonders
well a serious discussion about the dark side of this man will be made one day..but not now..not here
time to bail out
Anyone who knows Yamauchi - even on a casual basis - knows that the man was far from a saint. Many people in this very thread acknowledge his less-than-friendly (or, if you want to be brunt, "assholyness") demeanor and his heavy-handed and sometimes unethical business practices. But for fuck' sake, today is the day of his passing; of course people are going to focus on his more positive contributions when they reminisce about him. :/
I would like to point out that shovelware was a lot worse in the days of Atari, Coleco, and Mattel than it ever was after that. Hell, the whole North America Video Game Market crashed due in part to shovelware. The NES may've had bad games, but even something like the first TMNT game is of a vastly greater quality than what counted as shovelware on the 2600.
You know the Nintendo Seal of Quality referred to whether or not Nintendo had officially licenced the item in question (in the sense that it wasn't going to hard lock your system), not as a mark of the game's quality?
Don't see how these two things can't go hand in hand. Most people have an expiration date as far as running companies go. That doesn't take away the great things he did for the company (and industry).
Here's the short story they had about Yamauchi on NPR's All Things Considered this evening:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=224152681
Sorry if it was already posted.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=224152681
Sorry if it was already posted.
Boogalogist
Member
RIP in peace.
Thank you for the Nintendo memories.
Thank you for the Nintendo memories.
Journeywalker
Member
Rest In Peace. May your tanooki tail forever brush the leaves of the clouds.
Not sure if this has been posted,
but Yahoo had a story about his death. He was framed as the "Mariners owner who never went to a game"...Weird...
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/seattle-mariners-owner-hiroshi-yamauchi-dies-85-never-141948972--mlb.html
but Yahoo had a story about his death. He was framed as the "Mariners owner who never went to a game"...Weird...
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/seattle-mariners-owner-hiroshi-yamauchi-dies-85-never-141948972--mlb.html
A.Romero
Member
I remember thinking very highly of Yamauchi when I was very young. Now, that I know more about him, not so much.
I think anyone trying to argue about the influence this guy had on the industry is really just trying really hard to troll.
Would the industry be the same if this guy worked for another company? Most likely. Would we have video games in some form without him? I'm pretty sure yes.
Would we have the gaming industry as it is right now (for better or worse)? I don't think so.
Geniuses can also be assholes.
I think anyone trying to argue about the influence this guy had on the industry is really just trying really hard to troll.
Would the industry be the same if this guy worked for another company? Most likely. Would we have video games in some form without him? I'm pretty sure yes.
Would we have the gaming industry as it is right now (for better or worse)? I don't think so.
Geniuses can also be assholes.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Saavy, perhaps. And its Yamauchi so of course, ruthless. It's just interesting to see how it was not a foregone conclusion that Famicom would be a success or have third party games. It was even less of a foregone conclusion that it would come to America. It wouldn't have happened without clever leadership. We tend to think of consoles rolling out worldwide as a natural thing, but it really was just a random Japanese toy that ballooned into something bigger than anyone could have imagined.
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