Nintendo video game boss, Iwata, dies at 55
Returned company to profit in face of smartphone boom
TOKYO // Satoru Iwata, who led the Japanese video game company Nintendo through years of growth with its Pokemon and Super Mario franchises, died on the weekend of a bile duct tumour. He was 55. There was an outpouring of sorrow on Twitter for Iwata as a person who carved out an entertainment legacy. Fans thanked him for childhood memories and for bringing families together.
“He didn’t just create technology, he created a whole culture,” said Nobuyuki Hayashi, a consultant and technology expert. “It wasn’t just a consumer product that he had delivered. He brought to people something that’s eternal, what people remember from when they were kids. He was special.”
Iwata, president from 2002, died on Saturday in a Kyoto University hospital. He had not been seen recently at game events, such as E3 in Los Angeles, where he was usually a participant.
He led the Kyoto-based Nintendo’s development into a global company, with its hit Wii home console and DS handheld, and also through its recent woes caused by the popularity of smartphones. His replacement was not immediately announced, but the company said star game designer Shigeru Miyamaoto would remain in the leadership team along with Genyo Takeda, who is also in the game development field.
Iwata had been poised to lead Nintendo through another stage after it recently did an about- face and said it would start making games for smartphones, meaning that Super Mario the plumber would soon start arriving on mobile phones and tablets.
The fall- off in appetite for game machines in the past few years was partly because people were increasingly playing games or doing social media and other activities on smartphones. Nintendo has repeatedly had to lower prices on gadgets to woo buyers.
In its fiscal year ended in March, the company returned to profit after several years of losses.
Iwata had been employed at an innovative software company before he was recruited as Nintendo chief. He was tapped as president at a surprisingly young age, in his early 40s, for a Japanese company.
He was a respected and popular figure in the game industry, partly because he was relatively more approachable than executives at other Japanese companies.
As news of his death spread online, condolences and virtual tributes emerged on social media and on Miiverse, Nintendo’s online community where users can post notes and drawings created with a Nintendo 3DS or Wii U stylus.
Halo and Destiny developer Bungie posted a quote from Iwata’s 2005 talk at the Game Developers Conference on Twitter: “On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer.”