---
title: "Which came first, Microsoft or Nintendo?"
description: "Microsoft vs Nintendo: Nintendo came first, by 86 years — 1889 against 1975. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/microsoft-vs-nintendo/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Microsoft or Nintendo?

**Which came first, Microsoft or Nintendo?: Nintendo**

1889 — 86 years before Microsoft

Nintendo came first, by 86 years. Fusajiro Yamauchi began making hanafuda playing cards in Kyoto.

## Side by side

|  | Microsoft | Nintendo |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1975 | 1889 |
| Date | 1975-04-04 | 1889-09-23 |
| Category | company | company |
| What happened | Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque. | Fusajiro Yamauchi began making hanafuda playing cards in Kyoto. |

## Microsoft

Microsoft was founded in April 1975 to sell a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 — a product they had demonstrated before writing all of it. It predates Apple by almost exactly one year. The hyphen was dropped in 1976 and the company moved to Washington state in 1979.

## Nintendo

Nintendo was founded in 1889 to make handmade hanafuda cards, and it was a playing-card company for about eighty years. It is older than the Ford Motor Company (1903), older than the aeroplane, older than the Eiffel Tower by five months, and older than the modern Olympic Games. Before settling on video games in the 1970s it tried taxis, instant rice and a chain of love hotels.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Microsoft or Nintendo?

Nintendo, by 86 years — 1889 against 1975.

### When did Microsoft start?

1975. Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque.

### When did Nintendo start?

1889. Fusajiro Yamauchi began making hanafuda playing cards in Kyoto.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]