Nintendo on Monday announced that its CEO Saturo Iwata died of bile duct cancer at the age of 55 after fighting it for over a year after he went for a surgery to remove the bile duct growth.
Iwata was considered among his peers as a gamer at heart and the one who made games keeping the gamers in mind. Started out as a programmer in 1980s at Nintendo and became a president in 2002. An icon in the Japanese gaming industry, he was worried when the Nintendo products started to dwindle in 90s and came up with an idea which would appeal the non-gamers in Nintendo DS which became the best selling handheld console when it released in 2004.
At Nintendo, Iwata was behind some of the best games like Earthbound and Kirby and consoles which also included the successful Wii. The iconic software and hardware gaming company was losing its mark on the gaming community with the Wii U and was lagging behind in the sales number in the console race.
This year the company made its first annual operating profit in years mainly due to its long pending announcement to jump in the mobile phone platform. Its partnership with DeNA will see Nintendo come up with 5 games by 2017. Also, with a new console in development Nintendo seems to be on right track.
Successor to Iwata would be from the company itself but one who really believes in the mobile space and see Nintendo’s future on this platform. Nintendo will certainly miss Iwata’s vision for the company and not only Nintendo, but also the gamers and industry at large.
