Satoru Iwata

Nintendo chief executive Born: December 6, 1959; Died: July 11, 2015.

SATORU Iwata, who has died aged 55, was only the fourth person to lead the Japanese mega-corporation Nintendo since its creation as a card games company in 1889.

He will be remembered as a warm, humorous and modest chief executive whose background was in gaming and who played a major part in turning Nintendo around after the high-profile failure of products such as its Gamecube.

Believing that, like Hollywood, the games industry had become too dependent upon special effects and the latest technology, he introduced millions to gaming through the launch of the motion-sensing Wii console.

This prioritised playability and family entertainment over the latest graphics and processing power. He also oversaw the launch of the handheld Nintendo DS.

Mr Iwata’s route to the top was unconventional. He was born in Sapporo, the capital city of Japan’s northernmost island Hokkaido. His interest in electronics took him to the Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he joined a small company, Hal Laboratory, which was already closely involved in Nintendo, after graduating.

With a background in programming – he notably wrote the code to allow a baseball game to be played on a pocket calculator, with the numbers representing all the events in the game – he had an understanding of games as a writer and player which was fundamental to his later success.

He rose rapidly to become president of Hal in 1993, progressing to being appointed head of Nintendo’s corporate planning division seven years later.

Nintendo’s third president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, who had ruled over the Kyoto-based company for half a century, transforming it from a traditional playing-card company to a technological powerhouse, chose Mr Iwata to succeed him, making him the first chief executive to come from outside the Yamauchi family, which had run Nintendo until his appointment as president in 2002. He was subsequently made chief executive of Nintendo in America in 2013. Mr Yamauchi, who had remained his advisor, died the same year.

As well as the Wii, and the Nintendo DS consoles, his leadership also saw the introduction of the popular Amiibo line of toys which interact with gaming consoles.

The company returned to profit in the fiscal year ended March 2015 after several years of losses.

His tenure was not without its tribulations, however. Another console, the Wii U, flopped and Nintendo has struggled to react to the growth of both tablets and smartphones.

A fall-off in use of stand-alone games consoles such as the Nintendo Wii, Playstation and Xbox in recent years has been attributed to the fact that many people are increasingly using smartphones for games and interacting with friends and relatives on social media. His early death came as Mr Iwata was set to lead Nintendo through a volte face after it recently announced it would start producing games for phones.

Mr Iwata was a respected and popular figure in the game industry, partly because he was more approachable than executives at other Japanese companies. One tech industry commentator said: “He had a rare gift ... that made his industry-shaping ideas seem like friendly advice from an uncle.”

He pioneered a new style of openness in communicating with fans, particularly through the Nintendo Direct series of videos, in which he demonstrated his love for games and gaming.

He had not been seen recently at gaming events where he was usually a visible presence. It emerged that he had been fighting cancer.

His self-deprecating humour saw him comment on the disease’s impact on his physique. Last month, after leaving hospital, he tweeted an image of his “Mii”, an online avatar familiar to users of the company’s games. He had updated it, he said to take account of his slimmer appearance due to weight loss caused by surgery. “It looks likely it will be maintained,” he said of his new figure.

He is survived by his wife Kayoko.