21 April 1989: Nintendo launches the Game Boy
Nintendo released the Game Boy in Japan on April 21, 1989. It had a small greenish screen and was technically weaker than rivals that followed with color displays. But it was cheap, durable and ran for many hours on AA batteries, and it came with Tetris in the West. Combined with its successors in the line, it sold more than 100 million units and made handheld gaming Nintendo's stronghold.
The lesson: The best product is often the one that is good enough, cheap and reliable, not the most advanced.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Nintendo at the start of 2000 → $5,667 today, vs $4,626 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2000, the first year in our price data after the event. That is 5.7 times the money, and $1,041 more than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Nintendo teaches: Hit-driven businesses swing between genius and doom with each product; extrapolating the latest console's sales is a forecast about creativity, not about earnings.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | $15.00 | $5,667 | $4,626 |
| 2003 | $9.00 | $9,444 | $7,727 |
| 2005 | $11.00 | $7,727 | $5,763 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Nintendo? Every starting year and the full story →
More Nintendo history
- 6 July 2016: Pokemon Go sends Nintendo shares soaring
- 18 October 1985: Nintendo tests the NES in New York
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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