The commander of the legendary game company Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, has died of cancer, 55 years old.
Iwata has led the company since 2002, when he became the first top manager at Nintendo who was not part of the Yamauchi family.
Long career
He had been involved in the development of several Nintendo games while he worked at the studio HAL Laboratory 90s, and got his first leading role at the company in 2000.
His term as head of Nintendo has been characterized by some massive ups and a few downs. GameCube console, which launched in 2002, was not a great success, but the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii were the company’s best-selling machines in their categories.
Nintendo newest handheld console, the 3DS, was also popular while the sequel to Wii called Wii U, has sold poorly.
Iwata has shown willingness to adapt the company today’s reality, and have in the past talked about both mobile games and a new, secret console codenamed NX. He was also the company’s very clear and popular public face, thanks to its regular and humorous performances on Nintendo’s webcast.
However, he has struggled with health for some time and was forced to cancel their trips to the big E3 the last two years. He underwent an operation in 2014. Much indicated however that Iwata was about to be fresher, and his death comes as a surprise.
It is currently unclear who will lead the company forward , yet there is the legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto and Genyo Takeda who has chief roles at Nintendo.
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