RIP Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, 1959-2015

[YagamiFire]

RIP. A huge loss.

[King9999]

Just goes to show that tomorrow isn’t promised. You could be dead tomorrow.

[Autocrat1]

This gets my Nintendo Seal of Disapproval.

RIP

[King9999]

Time Magazine interviewed Iwata back in March: http://time.com/3747342/nintendo-ceo-satoru-iwata/

On F2P:

“I do not like to use the term ‘Free-to-play,’” says Iwata. “I have come to realize that there is a degree of insincerity to consumers with this terminology, since so-called ‘Free-to-play’ should be referred to more accurately as ‘Free-to-start.’”

“The thing that concerns me most is that, in the digital age, if we fail to make efforts to maintain the value of our content, there is the high possibility for the value to be greatly reduced as the history of the music industry has shown,” he continues. “On the other hand, I have no intention to deny the Free-to-start model. In fact, depending on how we approach this model, we may be able to overcome these problems.”

On the New Nintendo 3DS and Miyamoto upending the tea table:

Nintendo’s New 3DS (reviewed here) employs a special eye-tracking sensor that improves the way the handheld conveys its eponymous 3D trick. But according to Iwata, the feature emerged as the device was about to head into production, prompting an eleventh hour scramble.

“I think you’re probably familiar with the tales of how, in the late stages of development, Mr. Miyamoto always upends the tea table,” said Iwata. “So a similar thing happened this time. The hardware developers had designed a piece of hardware that they felt was at the final stage of prototyping, and they were bringing it to us for approval to begin moving forward with plans for manufacturing. But Mr. Miyamoto had seen that super-stable 3D just one week before, and he asked “Why aren’t we putting that in this system? If we don’t put this in it, there’s no point in making the system.”

Iwata says he was personally asked many times by his internal engineers, “Are we really going to do this?”

“But Nintendo is a company of Kyoto craftsman, and what we don’t want to do, is if we know we can make something better, we don’t want to leave that behind,” he explains. “So we were able to bring the super-stable 3D to reality by looking technically at what we can do to solve those challenges and finding those steps along the way to make it happen. This is where my background in technology is quite helpful, because it means that the engineers can’t trick me.”

[Red_Rick_Dias]

This is terrible news. I did not always agree with Iwata’s decisions, but he had a very real integrity and strategy to how he was guiding Nintendo and in some ways it was starting to yield results.

He was far more than a ‘suit’, and was genuinely engaged in what Nintendo was doing. His background in the hobby was very real, and he helped develop some excellent games.

Speaking personally, I learned a lot from how he approached his work… and found my own work improved for applying his methods to it. While I doubt I would have gotten the chance to thank him personally, I always wanted to and regret that now I definitely never will.

His death will have some genuine impact on our hobby. If you have the spare time tonight, I suggest reading up on his career. While it had some mistakes in it, it also had some wonderful triumphs and it’s worth understanding his contributions to something we have all enjoyed.

[King9999]

Apparently he was responsible for the US version of Dragon Warrior 1.

John Ricciardi (8-4) @ モンハン中 (johntv)

[King9999]

NickRocks, come on man…

[Wellman]

Damn, didn’t even know the dude had cancer.

Felt he micromanaged the company too much as President but I will give props where they are due, he was extremely hard working and did a number of great things including not being the standard short term profit seeking corporate stooge and trying to expand Nintendo’s markets while maintaining quality where it counts.

Rest In Peace, Iwata-san

[crotchpuncha]

Damn…

[Joshkaz]

Might be rip Nintendo at this point.

Iwata was the guy standing in the shareholders way going:

with him gone the shareholders are going to run Nintendo into the ground.

Rip Iwata. Good man who stood by what he believed.

[Negative-Zer0]

The shareholders are gonna fuck nintendo up now. Get ready for micro-transactions galore. They are gonna completely shit on Nintendo’s legacy.

This whole thing has me worried and sad.

[Great_Dark_Hero]

RIP Iwata…

[chadouken]

Fuck

[mowr]

Damn… shocking. Didn’t expect this at all.

[Infernoman]

A sad day in the Mushroom Kingdom… Who will guide the company now?

[Heat_Sleep]

Smiles and tears

[Lost_Dog]

Before he was president, he was a programmer who worked on games such as Earthbound, Smash Bros, Pokemon, and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63mG4k-VIyY

If you’ve never read these, I highly suggest checking it out now: http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/

Hm, interesting. I thought so, but in that interview they refer to FE:Fates as FE 15. That means Awakening was officially 14, not 13. The number installments were always fan based really and it seems Nintendo is just now starting to attach numbers to the titles. I’m assuming they’re actually count BS FE as a title, meaning Binding Blade is actually 7 and Rekka no Ken is actually 8? This needs to be sorted out asap.

Rip

[Geese_Pants]

I’m just at a loss for words…Rest in Peace Itawa.

[King9999]

A sad day in the Mushroom Kingdom… Who will guide the company now?

Miyamoto is acting president for now, but I don’t know if he will take on a permanent role (He doesn’t strike me as the type). The other person named in that doc was Genyo Takeda. He might end up being the next president.

[King9999]

Flags at HQ right now:

NOCHI (nochi0079)