Japan | Nintendo President Satoru Iwata dies of tumor

Satoru Iwata, President and CEO of Nintendo Co. Ltd.

Satoru Iwata, who led Japanese video game company Nintendo Co. through years of growth with its Pokemon and Super Mario franchises, died on the weekend of a bile duct tumor, the company said yesterday. 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 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.
Iwata led 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 will 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 will start making games for smartphones, meaning that Super Mario the plumber would soon start arriving on cellphones and tablets.
The falloff in appetite for game machines in the past few years was partly because people are increasingly playing games or doing social media and other activities on smartphones. Nintendo has repeatedly had to lower prices on gadgets to woo buyers.
Until the recent shift in strategy, company officials including Iwata had repeatedly rejected the idea of developing games for mobile devices, a market that they brushed off for years as irrelevant.
In March, Nintendo announced an alliance with Japanese mobile game company DeNA Co. to develop games for mobile devices.
The company returned to profit in the fiscal year ended March 2015 after several years of losses. Yuri Kageyama, Business Writer, Tokyo, AP