Satoru Iwata
Satoru Iwata 岩田 聡 | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | December 6, 1959 |
| Occupation(s) | President, Nintendo Co., Ltd. |
Satoru Iwata (岩田 聡, Iwata Satoru, born December 6, 1959) is the fourth president[1] of Nintendo, succeeding the long-standing previous president of the company, Hiroshi Yamauchi in 2002. He was responsible in great part for defining Nintendo's strategy both before and during the release of its Nintendo GameCube video game console in 2001, a vision which helped Nintendo generate a forty-one percent increase in sales at the end of the 2002 fiscal year.[2] Satoru Iwata is married.
Barron's Magazine named Iwata one of the world's top CEOs, due mostly to the Wii and Brain Age sales, as well as Nintendo's increased stock price.[3]
Biography
Early life
Satoru Iwata was born in Sapporo, Japan. He expressed interest in the creation of video games early on, and began producing electronic games at his home during his high school years. The several simple number games Iwata produced made use of an electronic calculator he shared with his schoolmates. Following high school, Iwata was admitted to the Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he majored in computer science.[4] While attending the school, he did freelance work for HAL Laboratory, Inc., a subsidiary of Nintendo, as a programmer.[5]
Career
After completing college, Iwata joined HAL Laboratory in a full-time capacity.[5] He became the company's coordinator of software production in 1983. Some of the video games he helped create while he worked there were Balloon Fight, EarthBound, and the Kirby games.[6][7] Iwata was eventually promoted to president of HAL in 1993.[5] Nevertheless, both he and HAL sometimes aided in the creation of Nintendo video games.
In 2000, Iwata took a position at Nintendo as the head of its corporate planning division. When Hiroshi Yamauchi, the company's president since 1949, retired on May 31, 2002, Iwata succeeded as Nintendo's fourth president and the first unrelated to the Yamauchi family through blood or marriage. He continues to help out at HAL as a consultant. It is said that Iwata still works as an artist there, assisting in creating concept art of Kirby characters for use in the Kirby series of video games. His latest projects are the Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS. He comments on the Wii in his section of Nintendo's Wii website, Iwata Asks. Iwata has also worked on The Legend of Zelda, Mario, and the Animal Crossing series of games. He has also played a cameo in WarioWare: Smooth Moves, where he is referred to as "Shop Manager Iwata".
References
- ^ Nintendo, Co. Nintendo Annual Report 2011. N.p., 31 Mar. 2011. Web. 13 Oct. 2011. http://www.nintendo.com/corp/annual_report.jsp.
- ^ "N-Sider: Profile: Satoru Iwata".
- ^ Andrew Bary. "The World's Best CEOs". Barron's Online.
- ^ Kiyoshi Takenaka (December 9, 2008). "Satoru Iwata - the man behind Nintendo's casual gaming boom". News Limited. Retrieved March 27, 2012.
{{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=(help) - ^ a b c Szczepaniak, John. "Before They Were Famous". Retro Gamer (35). Imagine Publishing: 76.
- ^ "Wii.com - Iwata Asks: New Super Mario Bros. Wii". Retrieved 12 July 2010.
- ^ "Wii.com - Iwata Asks: Special Edition Interview". Retrieved 12 July 2010.
- [Nintendo, Co. Nintendo Annual Report 2011. N.p., 31 Mar. 2011. Web. 13 Oct. 2011. http://www.nintendo.com/corp/annual_report.jsp.]
External links
- Seattle Post Intelligence: Satoru Iwata Interview
- Satoru Iwata Kikizo Video Interview
- Gamespy: Nintendo's New Direction - A discussion with Nintendo President Satoru Iwata
- Heart of a Gamer speech at GDC '05
- A+E Interactive E3 2007 Interview
- Level Up E3 2007 Interview [dead link]