Why Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata mattered

Yesterday, Nintendo announced the passing of its president, Satoru Iwata, who lost his battle with cancer at just 55. An executive, a developer and a gamer, Iwata oversaw one of the storied gaming company’s most creative and inventive periods, but more than his skills as an executive, he’ll be remembered for his personable and friendly face; host of the company’s Nintendo Direct livestreams to announce new games and interviewer in the Iwata Asks interviews, he was a refreshing change in a sea of tight lipped businessmen who were focused more on profits than games.

Iwata has been a gamer and developer his entire life; he joined Nintendo offspin HAL Laboratory in the 80s and programmed games such as Balloon Fight and Kirby. He became its president in 1993 and helped stabilize its finances when it was on the verge of bankruptcy, and despite being its president, he continued to work on games, coding cult classic Earthbound, and working on Super Smash Bros, as well as porting Pokemon’s battle system to Pokemon Stadium on his own. Shortly afterwards, he joined Nintendo and became head of corporate planning, and once again, continued to work on games, personally squashing bugs in Super Smash Bros Melee so it could hit its target release date.

In 2002, president Hiroshi Yamauchi, who had led the company for over 50 years, resigned and handed the reins to Iwata, in a turbulent time for the company. The GameCube was underselling, and the Game Boy Advance was the only thing keeping the company afloat. Iwata decided that he would welcome an entirely new generation of gamers through casual games and systems. He introduced the DS, a new dual screen touch-based console that you’ve probably heard of, and released it as a “third pillar”, not meant to replace the GBA. And the system caught on. Like wildfire. A sell out success, almost overnight, the DS turned Nintendo’s fortunes around and replaced the Game Boy Advance thanks to backward compatibility, and the games soon followed, with casual games like Brain Age Training and Nintendogs, while games for the core crowd like Mario Kart DS and New Super Mario Bros soon followed. The DS went on to become the best selling handheld console of all time, and just the second best selling console, less than two million units behind the PS2.

The DS proved that there was a sea of people who were willing to enjoy a new generation of interactivity with games, and the Wii soon followed with its motion contols. After being released to incredible sales in 2006, the Wii was yet another sell out success that would prove difficult to hunt down in stores all through 2007.

In 2011, Nintendo released the 3DS, a 3D enabled successor to the DS, its release price of $250 was optimistic, but it undersold. Iwata acted swiftly, shaving a third of its price and giving away 20 free games to early adopters, some of which have never been released on the 3DS eShop, and also took a voluntary pay cut. While the 3DS would never sell in the numbers its predecessor did, it continues to sell well enough to keep the company afloat.

But what followed next was a little shocking, and for Nintendo fans, disheartening. The Wii U came with a fancy new tablet controller that promised a future of asymmetric gaming, an experience in which one person would see different things from others, and create new experiences with it. The only problem was — it was incredibly expensive.

The GamePad was huge and clunky and was expensive to make, pushing the overall price of the system up to $299 for its base model. And yet, Nintendo failed to back the system up with the required software to ensure its success. Despite strong developer support at launch, particularly from Ubisoft (who’d been criticized for its poor early efforts on the Wii), the Wii U would only sell in its first month or so, with 3.06 million units sold in its first six weeks on shelves, just slightly behind the Wii’s 3.19, the Wii U would sell just 300k units the next quarter, and sold a mere 2 million units that year. It was no surprise Nintendo failed to turn a profit that year, the only shock was that it’d taken the company so long to revise its expectations.

Around that time, Iwata also hosted the Nintendo Direct livestreams, which were online broadcasts where the company would announce upcoming games. He would also regularly host Iwata Asks interviews in which he would interview developers so that fans can get a sense of what was going on behind the scenes. He was personable and friendly, a man you knew truly loved his job.

On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer."

And that sincerity is what we’ll miss most about this one man GIF generator. He may not always make the right decisions, but even when the decisions looked insane and hard to understand, you knew he was 100% supporting it. In his final months, he had been preparing the company to make the transition to mobile, all while continuing to produce its own consoles and handhelds, which included the NX, a mysterious console that sounds promising, alongside Nintendo’s mysterious venture into health with its QOL platform. The future looked, and still looks, bright for Nintendo, but it saddens me that the man behind it will never see his plan through.

Perhaps the most important takeaway is that life is short, and it’s too short to do a job you don’t like, because when you’re doing something you truly love, people will love you for it, whether you work behind the scenes or lead a multi million dollar company. Iwata will be missed, and let’s hope whoever replaces him will continue his incredible legacy.