Case 1:24-cv-00082-JJM-LDADocument 1Filed 02/26/24Page 9 of 41 PageID #: 9
video game consoles such as the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, the Nintendo Switch, and the Nintendo Switch Lite (a sister console of the Nintendo Switch dedicated to handheld play). The Game Boy family of consoles introduced consumers to landmark games like Tetris, Kirby’s Dream Land, and Pokémon. Since 1983, Nintendo has sold more than 5.4 billion video games and more than 750 million hardware units globally. Global sales of the Nintendo Switch alone have topped 139 million, and the top five Nintendo-developed copyrighted Nintendo Switch games have sold over 25 million copies each, rising above 198 million global sales in total.
24. Nintendo has built its company through substantial creative and financial investment in the development of new consoles, video games, products, technological security protections, intellectual property, and marketing. Nintendo has garnered significant consumer awareness and goodwill through its commitment to developing and delivering innovative, fun, and memorable video game consoles and games. Nintendo’s video games are creative, audiovisual works with detailed stories, characters, and elements that are wholly original to Nintendo and protected by the Copyright Act. Nintendo and its authorized licensees create and publish many popular video games made specifically and exclusively for play on Nintendo’s video game consoles including the Nintendo Switch.
25. Because of the lasting popularity of Nintendo’s cherished games across all its prior consoles, Nintendo sometimes makes copyrighted games it initially developed for legacy consoles available for play on newer consoles. For instance, in 2017, Nintendo released a dedicated home console called the Super Nintendo Entertainment System Classic Edition, which played games from Nintendo’s SNES console from the 1990s and carried twenty-one pre-installed titles from that historic platform. On the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo recently released a remastered version of Metroid Prime—a title originally made available in 2002 on
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