Who owns Nintendo?

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Nintendo is one of the most popular video game companies in the world. The publisher and developer has created games including “The Legend of Zelda,” “Super Mario Bros” and “Pokémon.” However, before manufacturing consoles, computer hardware and video games, Nintendo began by manufacturing and selling playing cards in Kyoto, Japan. The company was founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi and is a publicly traded, shareholder-owned entertainment and video game company, but it’s more complex than that.

The first console released by Nintendo was the 1983 Family Computer (Famicom) console in Japan. Today, it makes the best-selling console in Nintendo history, the Nintendo Switch 2, as well as a few other non-Switch products. As for who owns Nintendo, well, it’s largely owned by major shareholders and minor shareholders. The major shareholders are listed on the Nintendo website and are as follows: The Master Trust Bank of Japan, Ltd. (trust account), Custody Bank of Japan, Ltd. (trust account), JP Morgan Chase Bank 380752, The Bank of Kyoto, Ltd., State Street Bank and Trust Company 505001, and more. The shares are divided between each company and each owner.

Nintendo releases annual reports detailing its sales, shareholders, and other additional details regarding the company. As for the people in charge of day-to-day procedures at Nintendo, the company has had several executives who made major waves in the industry.

Today, Nintendo is led by President and Representative Director Shuntaro Furukawa. He is a Japanese businessman who is currently the sixth president of the company, which is impressive since the company has been around for 137 years. He replaced Tatsumi Kimishima, following Kimishima’s retirement in 2018, who took over after the death of Satoru Iwata. As president of Nintendo, Furukawa oversees all of Nintendo, including Nintendo of America.

He oversaw some of Nintendo’s most recent games and served as executive producer on “Star Fox,” “Pokémon Pokopia” and “Metroid Prime 4: Beyond.” As the head honcho of Nintendo, Furukawa is also responsible for everything the company makes, even if it chooses to create something strange like it did with Virtual Boy, which is one of the strangest products Nintendo has ever made.

Furukawa has worked with some of Nintendo’s best-known executives, such as former Nintendo of America president and COO Reggie Fils-Aimé. Reggie wrote a book called “Disrupting Gaming: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo” detailing the inner workings of Nintendo, which includes meeting Shuntaro Furukawa and former president Satoru Iwata. Furukawa also worked with Fils-Aimé’s replacement, Doug Bowser (who is unrelated to the King of the Koopas).

Nintendo is renowned in the video game industry for its characters, worlds, and long history of game development. For nearly fourteen decades, Nintendo has released landmark titles in the video game industry with names like Link, Zelda, Mario, Samus, and Pikachu. Compared to other game developers and publishers such as Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo is the oldest in the industry, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bigger company in terms of revenue.

Sony started its business in 1946 in Japan, which makes it much younger than Nintendo. Still, the company generally makes higher profits than Nintendo because Sony handles gaming, entertainment, electronics and music. Meanwhile, Nintendo is solely focused on gaming. Nintendo had a reported market capitalization of $67 billion tied to its Switch 2 and first-party games as of May 2026, while Sony had $131 billion across its entire business.

Even though Nintendo’s net sales and profits increased after the Switch 2’s first fiscal year, the Nintendo Switch 2 saw price increases. At a recent shareholder meeting, Furukawa also revealed that the company had increased base salaries by 10% in April 2023. At a time of turmoil in the gaming industry with layoffs and studio sales, Nintendo appears to be doing the exact opposite.