Playing to Wiin: Nintendo and the Video Game Industrys Greatest Comeback Review

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Playing to Wiin: Nintendo and the Video Game Industrys Greatest Comeback ReviewLet me start by saying that I read this book right after finishing another book on the same topic, "Nintendo Magic: Winning the Videogame Wars" by Osamu Inoue. While I pretty much enjoyed "Nintendo Magic", and ended up giving it 4 stars in my review, I think that "Playing to wiin" is a much better book, and everyone who is debating between them should definitely pick Daniel Sloans's book.
"Playing to wiin" contains an historical perspective of Nintendo and the video games war. The book takes you chronologically from the first days of Nintendo as a Japanese cards manufacturer, its first deal with branded Disney characters on the cards, and all the way to the world of electronic games and video consoles and software. There are two main reasons to pick this book over the competitor: first, editing-wise, the book provides a chronological perspective of the history, which makes lots of sense and reads a lot better than the other (which goes back and forth in time and includes many repetitions). Second, we also get lots of information on Nintendo's competitors at different parallel time lines (Sega, Sony, Microsoft), which allow us to grasp the market in a more complete way.
However, one has to keep in mind that the video game market is rapidly changing and adapting, and I think the book might become dated in a year or two. For instance, currently it looks like that Nintendo will probably won't survive Apple's surge on its popular hand-hold devices. The first huge crack in its hand-hold market is starting to show with the recent amazing $80 reduction of the 3DS's lunch price, and the declining stock price in the last couple of months. I think Nintendo's immediate future should be as interesting as its history.
I think this book makes an interesting read for everyone who is interested in the industry, but also to young Business schools' graduates who can easily learn a thing or two about somewhat different style of managing a large international business (e.g. keep a large amount of liquid cash on the side for dark days). Overall, for me this is a 5 stars book.Playing to Wiin: Nintendo and the Video Game Industrys Greatest Comeback OverviewNintendo is a worldwide innovator in the creation of interactive entertainment. This fascinating look at one of Japan's most successful global companies, Nintendo: Playing to Wiin traces the company's humble origins to its stunning success with the DS and Wii consoles.

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Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America Review

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Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America ReviewThe best part of this book, by far, is the cover. It's an arresting piece of artwork for anyone who grew up with a Nintendo: Mario paused in mid-jump, a perfectly Nintendo shade of blue wallpapered behind him. It's an image that promises more than the book offers.
The writing is clean and straightforward but far too often Ryan resorts to pop culture jokes (the intro to Sonic the Hedgehog is particularly brutal) or cultural stereotypes (in the section detailing with the creation of the first Mario arcade game are the inevitable references to yin and yang and Japanese Zen). It's a style that should be familiar to anyone who's read Wired magazine. There are also a few spelling errors sprinkled throughout the book, nothing terrible, although Konami is referred to as Komani.
As a history of Nintendo it's a worthy primer but don't expect anything as in-depth or meticulously researched as David Sheff's "Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered the World," from which "Super Mario" paraphrased a cover image and a subtitle. "Game Over" was a video game book but also a business book. At nearly 500 pages it offered a level of detail and character necessary to understand the under-scrutinized subject. Ryan too often focuses on the trivial and skates by the interesting; multiple page bios on historical footnotes like Captain Lou Albano and Billy Mitchell yet a single paragraph of background on Shigeru Miyamoto. For a more compelling look at the history of Nintendo and Miyamato, I'd first refer one to "Game Over" and "Master of Play" by Nick Paumgarten from the New Yorker.
Ryan's greatest mistake is in his disregard for any description of the actual act of playing video games. There's never any sense of what it's like to hold a controller in one's hands and play a game. Although it's safe to assume that most everyone who reads this book will have played most of the games described within, there is something missing to a book that covers such an intensely interactive activity without any mention of what it's like to participate. It's like writing a book about football and never describing what happens on the field. The other recent mainstream book about video games, last year's "Extra Lives" by Tom Bissell, details the peculiar mix of immersion and passivity that goes into playing video games as does Nicholson Baker's "Painkiller Deathstreak" from the New Yorker magazine.
It's been nearly twenty years since Sheff's book and since then there's been an explosion of innovation and expansion in the video game industry, largely undocumented by anyone other than industry trade magazines and online publications. Ryan's book is good video game journalism, but it needs to be better than that. It needs to be good journalism.
Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America OverviewThe story of Nintendo's rise and the beloved icon who made it possible. Nintendo has continually set the standard for video-game innovation in America, starting in 1981 with a plucky hero who jumped over barrels to save a girl from an ape. The saga of Mario, the portly plumber who became the most successful franchise in the history of gaming, has plot twists worthy of a video game. Jeff Ryan shares the story of how this quintessentially Japanese company found success in the American market. Lawsuits, Hollywood, die- hard fans, and face-offs with Sony and Microsoft are all part of the drama. Find out about: *Mario's eccentric yet brilliant creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, who was tapped for the job because was considered expendable. *Minoru Arakawa, the son-in-law of Nintendo's imperious president, who bumbled his way to success. *The unexpected approach that allowed Nintendo to reinvent itself as the gaming system for the non-gamer, especially now with the Wii Even those who can't tell a Koopa from a Goomba will find this a fascinating story of striving, comeuppance, and redemption.

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