Do you know Nintendo Switch? Since its launch on March 3, 2017,
the Nintendo Switch has sold over 78 million consoles worldwide.
When it was released, it reminds me of my childhood.
Switch reminds me of the device that was
the most popular portable gaming device in the 90s era.
As a kid, having a gaming gadget was a luxury. I didn’t have it back then, but I was grateful that I have a friend who was kind enough to allow me to try the little grey box. The Game Boy.
It’s safe to say that it’s the grandfather of Switch. Why was Game Boy so popular?
Gunpei Yokoi, the inventor of Game Boy, believed that people want to play games anywhere and anytime. He used monochromatic display so
Game Boy can last longer with just 2 AA batteries. Game Boy became his most successful brain-child that helps Nintendo to be the leader of portable gaming gadgets.
Tracking back further to the past, this is the great-grandfather of Switch. The Game & Watch, it was released 9 years before the Game Boy.
Do you know what inspire Gunpei Yokoi to build gadgets that were lovable?
At that time, Nintendo was not a big company. Gunpei Yokoi needed to develop something that is affordable and also profitable. He believed people are looking for fun experience rather than the most cutting-edge technology. Gunpei Yokoi called his philosophy as
lateral thinking with withered technology.
Kareta Gijutsu no Shuhei Shikou
The term lateral thinking was coined by the psychologist Edward the Bono in the 1960s. According to de Bono, lateral thinking deliberately distances itself from the standard perception of creativity as “vertical” logic, the classic method for problem solving. In Yokoi’s case, Yokoi believed that Nintendo would stand out by conceiving creative and entertaining uses for existing hardware. David Epstein in his book Range said the heart of Gunpei Yokoi’s philosophy was putting cheap, simple tech to use in ways no one else considered.
Quoting Vice:
In other words, don’t look ahead: think sideways. The best way to create a hit product was by using proven, off-the-shelf parts. (That these parts were far cheaper to procure than bleeding-edge components certainly didn’t hurt the bottom line, either.)
He tried to find fun ways of using a matured technology. During his time, that matured tech was older black-and-white LCD calculator screens.
Thanks to the competition between Sharp and Casio, the production cost of that kind of screen was getting lower. He ditched colorful display in favor of superior battery life and affordable price point for Game Boy. He used Nintendo cartridges system so the people can just plug and play the game as they want .
Nintendo’s management trust on Gunpei Yokoi paid off. The people adored the more affordable and enjoyable Game Boy over Atari’s Lynx and Sega’s Game Gear. Nintendo’s competitors with more superior technology was a commercial flop. The competitors put a hefty price point and need more batteries to power their top tech colored display. The Game Boy reinvent the portable gaming industry.
Gunpei Yokoi advises young employees not just to play with technology for its own sake, but to play with ideas. Quoting from the book Range by David Epstein:
Yokoi was the first to admit. “I don’t have any particular specialist skills. I have a sort of vague knowledge of everything.” He advise young employees not just to play with technology for its own sake, but to play with ideas.
“Be a producer. The producer knows that there’s such a thing as a semiconductor, but doesn’t need to know its inner workings. That can be left to the experts. Everyone takes the approach of learning detailed, complex skills. If no one did this then there wouldn’t be people who shine as engineers. Looking at me, from the engineer’s perspective it’s like: look at this idiot. But once you’ve got a couple hit products under your belt, this word ‘idiot’ seems to slip away somewhere.”
The story of how Gunpei Yokoi ended up in Nintendo is even more fascinating. In 1965, he just graduated as an Electrical Engineer. He tried to find a stable job in his hometown, Kyoto. At that time, Nintendo was not in a good place. Nintendo struggled financially as the collapsed of playing cards (hanafuda) business. The Nintendo Playing Card Company hired Gunpei Yokoi to maintain the assembly-line machines regulating its cash crop, hanafuda cards. Yokoi was known as a quiet worker worked the conveyor belts for years, building a reputation among his peers as an electronics whiz who built toys and gadgets in his spare time. His tinkering hobby turned out helping Nintendo to shift from selling hanafuda cards to affordable and popular toys. Hiroshi Yamauchi, the Nintendo president at that time asked Yokoi to make any game to boost sales in Christmas 1970.
Gunpei Yokoi proposed the Ultra Hand. Surprisingly, the Ultra Hand was a hit, selling more than 1.2 million units. With the result exceeded expectations, Yokoi was quickly promoted from maintenance duty to research and development. President Yamauchi founded a new R&D division and installed Yokoi as the head. From the R&D division, Gunpei Yokoi’s creativity blossom into important fruition in the landscape of game industry.
It’s fascinating how a person can be inspired by a salaryman with a calculator, and keep going to reinvent handheld gaming. Many believed his legacy lives on at Nintendo. Clayton Christensen, author of various books on innovation, mentioned Nintendo Wii is an empowering innovation. Nintendo understood that the barrier to new consumers using video game systems was the complexity of game play, not the quality of existing graphics. I still remember the excitement I felt the first time I play tennis on Wii. The physical experience feels like doing real sport. Haha.
Unfortunately, Gunpei Yokoi left Nintendo in 1996. There was a rumour that his resignation was due to the failure of the Virtual Boy console. But that rumour was dismissed by a statement from Nintendo.
It is reality that Mr. Yokoi has indeed left, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the failure of the Virtual Boy. There’s no doubt that the Virtual Boy was a failure, but the head of the company himself has said that the blame for that rests on the decision to sell it to begin with. The D-pad and Game Boy that Mr. Yokoi developed are incredible. Such a man taking the blame for the 32-bit device and leaving the company is completely made up.
In 1997, sadly he passed away in a traffic accident.
Thank you, Gunpei Yokoi. For your creative tinkering. For a lesson to play with ideas and utilize what we have around us. And to let a kid feel joy for a little while.
I guess I need to keep observing and keep learning to build something fun. 😀
Do you have any Nintendo devices?
Additional note: of course it’s naive to say that the reinvention of Nintendo is purely because of Gunpei Yokoi. Several notable names like Hiroshi Yamauchi (Nintendo President at that time), Shigeru Miyamoto (Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros designer), and Masayuki Uemura (hardware designer) were at the right moment in the process of reinventing Nintendo.
Sources and further read if you are interested in exploring more about Gunpei Yokoi and Nintendo.
- Vice, How Gunpei Yokoi Reinvented Nintendo.
- Escapist Magazine
- Bloomsbury Collections article on Shigeru Miyamoto
- 10 Reasons Game Boy Succeed, Den of Geek
- Lateral Thinking — Design Monday.
- Nintendo: Infinite Game, by The Generalist
- Kotaku article on Masayuki Uemura
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