It would be a stretch to call the Nintendo Wii U a failure. Between its launch in November 2012 and the end of 2013, the console had sold only 5.83 million units. In contrast, the PlayStation 4 sold 4.2 million units in one-fourth that amount of time.
Pundits have called Nintendo dead in the water, but the beloved brand has pulled a rabbit out of its hat in bad times before — and it could do it again.
See also: How Nintendo Shaped 30 Years of U.S. Gaming
Nintendo has never been afraid of testing new waters. It started out as a company for playing cards and non-digital games more than a century ago, and you'd be surprised at all the things its management has tried since. Now, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has halved his salary and promised a new direction for the company, with plans for a new console, licensing iconic characters to partners, bringing those characters to phones and tablets, and an emphasis on fitness and "quality of life."
Here are just a few recent examples from Nintendo’s 125-year history of why you shouldn't write off Iwata's efforts just yet.

The Nintendo Entertainment System, released in America in 1985.
Image: Flickr, Luftholen
For more than 90 years, Nintendo made a plethora of products that weren't video games. The company made eclectic investments in everything from playing cards (the original business), board games, toys, taxis, food and even love hotels. Most of these plans didn't turn out well, and the cards business wasn't exactly booming by the 1970s.
Nintendo looked to the video game industry, which blasted through the '70s but crashed abruptly as the '80s began. Rather than focus on arcades, Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES (itt was called the Famicom in Japan). The NES was so successful, it’s often credited with saving the video game industry.
It was on the NES that Nintendo brought characters such as Mario, Peach, Donkey Kong, Kirby, Link, Zelda and Bowser into the home. Atari and a few others had released moderately successful consoles before the NES hit the scene, but they were too expensive and had too few quality games.
Nintendo set itself apart by giving the "Nintendo Seal of Approval" to games to help consumers weed through the trash; think of the Apple App Store’s featured apps. The home console market as we know it today owes its existence to the success of the NES, an unexpected move by a floundering trading card company called Nintendo.

The Nintendo Wii, released in 2006.
Image: Flickr, David Dawson
The Nintendo 64 and GameCube weren't failures, but they definitely weren’t as successful as the NES and its successor, the Super NES. The NES sold nearly 62 million units during its lifespan. The N64 only reached 33 million, and the GameCube only just under 22 million.
When the Nintendo 64 launched, it soon faced new competition: the Sony PlayStation. Both the PlayStation and the PlayStation 2 crushed Nintendo in sales figures by attracting acclaimed third-party games. Nintendo’s world-class first-party games still attracted a core audience of superfans, but that wasn't enough to stay on top.
It was one of the great comeback stories of gaming history when the GameCube’s successor, the Nintendo Wii, sold a whopping 100 million units, making it one of the best selling video game consoles of all time. It outsold the PlayStation 3 by more than 20 million consoles.
While competitors Sony and Microsoft doubled down on first-person shooters for a core audience of teenage and 20-something males in the Wii era, Nintendo successfully lured the whole family with its child-friendly content, innovative fitness games and totally original motion controls. All of those things have been copied copiously by the Xbox and the PlayStation platforms ever since.

Image: Flickr, Chase N.
Unless you’re a Washington sports fan, you probably didn't even know Nintendo has owned the Seattle Mariners since 1992. Nintendo executive Hiroshi Yamauchi purchased the team as a "gesture of goodwill to the citizens of the Pacific Northwest." The Nintendo of America headquarters were based in the region.
The team had been struggling both financially and on the field. When Yamauchi purchased the Mariners, he made sure they stayed in the Seattle area. Former Cincinnati Reds manager Lou Piniella was hired to run the team shortly after the acquisition. Piniella went on to lead the team to its first American League division championship in 1995. The Mariners even attracted a number of Japanese players, including Ichiro Suzuki and Hisashi Iwakuma.
Nintendo saved the Mariners as we know them. If Yamauchi hadn't made that buy, the team probably wouldn't have been able to stay in Seattle. When Yamauchi died last year, Nintendo retained ownership of the team. The Mariners’ current CEO is former Nintendo chairman Howard Lincoln.
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