SONY & NINTENDO: THE WORLD OF GAMES AND LEISURE

The Grandma is arriving to the Bank of Tokyo

Yesterday, The Jones visited Sony Entertainment and Nintendo, the world leaders in games and entertainment. The Grandma took profit of the day and went to visit the Bank of Tokyo to control and manage her Japanese business. Today, The Jones are visiting Himeji Castle. They're enjoying one of the most spectacular Japanese contructions with lots of years of history and stories.

More information: SONY

Sony Interactive Entertainment is a multinational video game and digital entertainment company and is a wholly owned subsidiary and part of the Consumer Products and Services Group of Sony Corporation in Japan.

Marta Jones at Sony Headquarters, Tokyo

The company was founded in Tokyo, Japan, and established on November 16, 1993, as Sony Computer Entertainment, to handle Sony's venture into video game development with its PlayStation brand. 

Since the successful launch of the original PlayStation console in 1994, the company has since been developing the PlayStation lineup of home video game consoles and accessories. Expanding upon North America and other countries, the company soon became Sony's main resource for research and development in video games and interactive entertainment.

More information: PlayStation

In 1994, Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), began to produce the original PlayStation console in North America. In April 2016, SCE and Sony Network Entertainment was restructured and reorganized into Sony Interactive Entertainment, carrying over the operations and primary objectives from both companies.

The Jones are playing Minecraft with their PSPs

SIE handles the research and development, production, and sales of both hardware and software for the PlayStation video game systems. Alongside, it is also a developer and publisher of video game titles and is composed of several subsidiaries of Sony's largest markets: North America, Europe and Asia.

SIE currently has three main headquarters around the world: the global and Americas region headquarters in San Mateo, California; Kōnan, Minato, Tokyo, Japan; which control operations in Asia and was also formerly the headquarters for Sony Computer Entertainment; and London, United Kingdom which controls operations in Europe and Oceania. SIE also has smaller offices and distribution centers in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, San Diego, California US; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Melbourne, Australia; and Seocho-gu, Seoul, South Korea and Liverpool, UK.

More information: The Guardian

PlayStation is a gaming brand that consists of four home video game consoles, as well as a media center, an online service, a line of controllers, two handhelds and a phone, as well as multiple magazines. It is created and owned by Sony Interactive Entertainment since December 3, 1994, with the launch of the original PlayStation in Japan.

We will try to create conditions where persons could come together 

in a spirit of teamwork, and exercise to their heart's desire 

their technological capacity.
 

Akio Morita

Nintendo Co., Ltd. is a Japanese multinational consumer electronics and video game company headquartered in Kyoto. Nintendo is one of the world's largest video game companies by market capitalization, creating some of the best-known and top-selling video game franchises, such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Pokémon.

The Grandma's grandma at Nintendo, Kyoto, 1889

Founded on 23 September 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it originally produced handmade hanafuda playing cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as cab services and love hotels. 

Abandoning previous ventures in favor of toys in the 1960s, Nintendo then developed into a video game company in the 1970s, ultimately becoming one of the most influential in the industry and Japan's third most-valuable company with a market value of over $85 billion. From 1992 until 2016, Nintendo was also the majority shareholder for the Seattle Mariners of Major League Baseball.

More information: Nintendo

In 1956, Hiroshi Yamauchi, grandson of Fusajiro Yamauchi, visited the U.S. to talk with the United States Playing Card Company, the dominant playing card manufacturer there. He found that the biggest playing card company in the world was using only a small office. Yamauchi's realization that the playing card business had limited potential was a turning point. He then acquired the license to use Disney characters on playing cards to drive sales.

Merche Jones, Mario, Luigi and Donkey at Nintendo

In 1963, Yamauchi renamed Nintendo Playing Card Co. Ltd. to Nintendo Co., Ltd. The company then began to experiment in other areas of business using newly injected capital during the period of time between 1963 and 1968. Nintendo set up a taxi company called Daiya. This business was initially successful. 

However, Nintendo was forced to sell it because problems with the labour unions were making it too expensive to run the service. It also set up a love hotel chain, a TV network, a food company -selling instant rice- and several other ventures. All of these ventures eventually failed, and after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, playing card sales dropped, and Nintendo's stock price plummeted to its lowest recorded level of ¥60.

More information: The Official Home for Mario Bros

Nintendo's first venture into the video gaming industry was securing rights to distribute the Magnavox Odyssey video game console in Japan in 1974. Nintendo began to produce its own hardware in 1977, with the Color TV-Game home video game consoles. Four versions of these consoles were produced, each including variations of a single game, for example, Color TV Game 6 featured six versions of Light Tennis.

Víctor, Claudia & Silvia Jones are playing with Mario

In 1979, Gunpei Yokoi conceived the idea of a handheld video game, while observing a fellow bullet train commuter who passed the time by interacting idly with a portable LCD calculator, which gave birth to Game & Watch. 

These systems do not contain interchangeable cartridges and thus the hardware was tied to the game. 

The first Game & Watch game, Ball, was distributed worldwide. The modern cross D-pad design was developed in 1982, by Yokoi for a Donkey Kong version. Proven to be popular, the design was patented by Nintendo. It later earned a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award.

More information: Nintendo Life

In 2011, Nintendo released the Nintendo 3DS, based upon a glasses-free stereoscopic 3D display. In February 2012, Nintendo acquired Mobiclip, a France-based research and development company specialized in highly optimized software technologies such as video compression. The company's name was later changed to Nintendo European Research & Development.

On 17 March 2015, Nintendo announced a partnership with Japanese mobile developer DeNA to produce games for smart devices. The first of these, Miitomo, was released in March 2016.

More information: Donkey Kong Country

Nintendo means 'leave luck to the stars'.

Fusajiro Yamauchi