70 years of being a family-owned, regional playing-card company is pretty much the definition of stagnation. Hiroshi Yamauchi deserves credit for having the vi

70 years of being a family-owned, regional playing-card company is pretty much the definition of stagnation. Hiroshi Yamauchi deserves credit for having the vision to expand into electronic games, but nothing they did before Miyamoto could truly be considered a market-shaping event. Other than switching to electronics and hiring Miyamoto, Yamauchi was a middling CEO at best. Super Mario is one of the most recognizable characters in the world. The NES sold 60 million units. The SNES sold 50 million units. If a great CEO had been running Nintendo at any point since ~1983, Nintendo would be Disney right now.