Nintendo Wii makes former chairman Japan's richest man

9 May 2008 11:08 GMT / By Verity Burns

The success of the Wii console in the past year has made former Nintendo chairman Hiroshi Yamauchi Japan's richest man, according to Forbes magazine's annual rankings.

Now worth $7.8 billion, 80-year-old Yamauchi has jumped from third place in the list to first thanks to a $3 billion boost in his net worth this year.

Shares of Kyoto-based Nintendo have more than tripled in the past 2 years, boosting the value of the company to around $79 billion, and the fortune of Yamauchi, who owns 10%.

Yamauchi knocked property tycoon Akira Mori from the top spot. Mori, whose Mori Trust is one of the Tokyo's biggest landlords fell to second spot with a net worth of $7.7 billion. We're sure he's crying into his moneybags.

Forbes said its rich lists calculations were based on public share prices and its own estimates of privately held wealth. This year Warren Buffet topped the full list, worth $62 billion. Now that's just not fair.

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Gaming, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo, Games industry, EA, PC games, Disney, Sony, Microsoft, PS2