Nintendo President Satoru Iwata Dies At 55

Satoru Iwata

KYOTO, Japan -- Nintendo president and chief executive Satoru Iwata has died. He was 55. The cause of death, according to a statement released by Nintendo, was a "bile duct growth."

Iwata began his videogame career as a developer at Tokyo-based HAL Laboratories, a subsidiary of Nintendo. He was promoted to president of HAL in 1993; seven years later, he was assigned to lead corporate planning at Nintendo. In 2002, Iwata took the helm of the legendary videogame company from Hiroshi Yamauchi.

Iwata, born in Sapporo, was only the fourth person to lead Nintendo since its inception as a playing card company in 1889, and the first president unrelated to the founding Yamauchi family.

During his tenure, Nintendo moved aggressively into the handheld marketplace with the portable DS line and introduced the Wii, a home videogame console that has sold more than 101 million units worldwide.

"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," Iwata said in his keynote during the 2015 Game Developers Conference.

Time Magazine said that Iwata mattered because he was one of the few gaming executives with hands-on experience.