Nintendo is second largest company in Japan

Somewhat surprising news from Japan is that the big N is well on it's way to conquering all comers.

Based on market cap, Nintendo is now the second largest company in Japan, second only to Toyota.

That's right - a gaming company is larger than heavyweights like Mitsubishi, Panasonic - and, yes, even Sony. With Nintendo shares closing up 3.1% today the big N has moved into second place, usurping Canon.

The top three largest companies in Japan now stand at:

• Toyota - Y24,000bn (that's 24 trillion yen)
  
• Nintendo - Y8,390bn (roughly $73 billion)
  
• Canon - Y8,120bn
  

Citing Nintendo's historically conservative profit forecasts, the Financial Times and other analysts don't think Nintendo is overvalued - which means it's still got room to grow.

Having surpassed Sony and their market cap of Y6,540bn back in June, it's clear that Nintendo's strategy of innovating rather than competing head to head with Microsoft and Sony is really paying off.

It's a shame their innovation didn't pay off years ago when they got Silicon Graphics to help with the design of the Nintendo64. Both companies seemed to suffer badly in the following years, although the team from SGI left to form ArtX (who developed the Flipper chip use for the Gamecube's graphics). ArtX were then bought out by ATI, and used their technology to develop the R300 series of graphics cores.

Those R300 cores powering ATI's graphics cards for the last few years can trace their technology all the way back to the Infinite Reality graphics that gave Silicon Graphics machines the power to bring those famous Jurassic Park dinosaurs to life - which also formed the basis for the graphics in the Nintendo64.

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