Gamers everywhere woke up to the news that Nintendo President, Satoru Iwata, has passed away at the age of 55 on July 11th after dealing with cancer for more than a year. Nintendo released a statement today confirming his passing. Having been notably absent from last years’ E3 on doctor’s orders, he underwent surgery to remove a bile duct growth last year and revealed that he was recuperating well.
A legacy of a Gamer
Satoru Iwata was Nintendo’s fourth president succeeding Hiroshi Yamauchi who already strengthened Nintendo as an iconic video game brand. Iwata was a programmer for HAL Laboratory, known for generating the Super Smash Bro and Kirby franchise. He later went on to lead Nintendo in 2002. He’s known for leading Nintendo in a new generation which saw the company’s success with the Nintendo DS and the Wii. He saw Nintendo’s best and worst years and was always pushing for Nintendo to take franchises into the mobile gaming market, more importantly when console expectations weren’t met, Iwata refused to lay off staff to compensate for losses stating that it wouldn’t be good for business in any sense.
“If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease, I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world.”
Satoru Iwata came from humble beginnings and had a profound fascination for video games. He studied at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, graduated in 1982 and went on to join a group of friends to start HAL Laboratory. In his keynote, at GDC 2005, he said.
“People sometimes ask me what I did when I was hired at HAL,”The answer is that I was a programmer. And an engineer. And a designer. And I marketed games. I also ordered food. And I helped clean up. And it was all great fun.”
Iwata will be remembered as someone who was passionate about gaming and believed about being a gamer first and a businessman second and if you grew up during the golden age of gaming playing super mario, there’s enough to know that he had an impact on generations of gamers where we still see sequels being made today.
Rest in Peace, Satoru Iwata. I simply cannot thank you enough for giving me and so many others the joy of gaming.
