Satoru Iwata was a Japanese video game programmer who became the fourth president and CEO of Nintendo. He had a vision to expand the video game market beyond that of the hardcore gamer and appeal to a wider audience. This was accomplished during his time at Nintendo by focusing on simplifying gameplay to have less of a learning curve for new gamers and focusing on entertaining games rather than cutting edge graphics.

Prior to working at Nintendo Iwata started his career in 1980 working at HAL Laboratory while attending university. While working at HAL Laboratory he worked as a programmer and closely collaborated with Nintendo on many Famicom games. The first game Satoru Iwata worked on that was published by Nintendo was “Pinball” for the Famicom/NES. Iwata contributed to the creation of many popular Nintendo games such as Balloon Fight, Earthbound and the Kirby Series.

Satoru Iwata was instrumental in HAL Laboratory’s early success and he became the president of HAL Laboratory in 1993 at the insistence of Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi. Iwata was a hands-on President and still got involved in the development of games while running the business. During his tenure as President of HAL Laboratory’s he assisted in the development of the Pokémon and Super Smash Bros. series.

Hiroshi Yamauchi would eventually recruit Iwata and hired him as the head of Nintendo’s corporate planning division in 2000. Nintendo soon saw notable growth with Iwata’s guidance and, when Yamauchi retired, he became the company’s fourth president and the first president of the company not related to the Yamauchi family. Iwata held the position of president from 2002 until his death in 2015. Under Iwata’s direction, Nintendo developed the Nintendo DS which became the best-selling Nintendo handheld console to date and the Wii which became the best-selling Nintendo home console to date.

Iwata made his vision of expanding gaming to a broader audience come to fruition with the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii. This helped Nintendo achieve financial growth after years of decline. His focus of expanding the appeal of video games across all demographics through a blue ocean business strategy was proven successful as Nintendo had record profits in 2009.

In June 2014, a tumor was discovered growing within his bile duct during a routine physical. Iwate would undergo surgery to have the tumor removed and although he recovered from the illness, he relapsed the following year and passed away due to complications on July 11, 2015. Upon his passing, Shigeru Miyamoto and Genyo Takeda assumed the roles of Representative Directors of the company until Tatsumi Kimishima was elected as Iwata’s successor on September 16, 2015