The secret to Nintendo's success

By Adrian Ma,

Wailin Wong, Corey Bridges, Ella Feldman, Kate Concannon

Published June 16, 2025 at 9:26 AM EDT

Nintendo has been a titan in the video game industry for decades, but that wasn't always the case. At its very core, Nintendo sees itself as a toy company which is evident in its products from the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to the Nintendo Switch 2.

Today on the show, we explore Nintendo's history and examine how a small playing card company in Japan became a multimedia giant.

Related episodes:

Forever games: the economics of the live service model

Designing for disability: how video games become more accessible

The boom and bust of esports

Work. Crunch. Repeat: Why gaming demands so much of its employees

Video Game Industry Week: The Final Level

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Adrian Ma

Adrian Ma covers work, money and other "business-ish" for NPR's daily economics podcast The Indicator from Planet Money.

Wailin Wong

Wailin Wong is a long-time business and economics journalist who's reported from a Chilean mountaintop, an embalming fluid factory and lots of places in between. She is a host of The Indicator from Planet Money. Previously, she launched and co-hosted two branded podcasts for a software company and covered tech and startups for the Chicago Tribune. Wailin started her career as a correspondent for Dow Jones Newswires in Buenos Aires. In her spare time, she plays violin in one of the oldest community orchestras in the U.S.

Corey Bridges

Corey Bridges is an assistant producer at NPR's daily economics podcast, The Indicator from Planet Money. Bridges enjoys covering stories ranging from public policy to the economics of sports. At The Indicator, he has worked on stories about how certain environmental regulations can impede climate progress and others about how college athletes are taking advantage of their name, image and likeness.

Ella Feldman

Kate Concannon

Kate Concannon is the Supervising Senior Editor at The Indicator from Planet Money. She leads this small, collaborative team of hosts, reporters and producers in making sense of crucial, but often complex and confusing, economic news in just 10 minutes a day.