Nintendo President Satoru Iwata Dies at 55

Thanks for an awesome and wonderful childhood..

Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata died Saturday due to a bile duct growth, the company announced Sunday.

Iwata, 55, was appointed president of the gaming company in 2002, overseeing the launch of the hugely successful Wii console, the Nintendo DS handheld and its line of Amiibo interactive figurines.

When he replaced longtime president Hiroshi Yamauchi, Iwata became only the fourth president in the history of the company and the first from outside the Yamauchi family.

Growing up in Japan in the 1980s, Super Mario was a gaming character that you couldn’t avoid. But as the gaming population started to decline in the late 90s, Mr Iwata knew that he needed to make products that were more appealing to non-gamers.

And he succeeded. Nintendo DS quickly became the world’s best-selling handheld game console when it was released in 2004.

Two years later, there came another successful launch of Wii which was dubbed the computer game that even your grandma can play. Together, they switched on millions of new converts to computer games.

But the rise of mobile phone games has posed a serious threat to Nintendo and some investors questioned his decision not to enter the market sooner.

As he put it himself, Mr Iwata was a chief executive who had the brain of a games developer and the heart of a gamer.