Nintendo president Satoru Iwata during one of his Nintendo Direct video events.
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The entire video game industry is going to miss Nintendo’s CEO

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 5 min

The video game industry lost one of its most memorable leaders yesterday, as Nintendo announced that its president and chief executive Satoru Iwata had died at 55. I have a lot of personal memories of Iwata, from watching his speeches in his early days as the leader of one of the most loved entertainment companies in the world to interviews in which he showed more of his own personality.

I didn’t always agree with his decisions, and I felt that he could have moved sooner to act on big trends that would have put Nintendo in a stronger position than it is in today. But Iwata was a wonderful leader for Nintendo and a statesman for the global gaming industry. The game industry is mourning his loss, as he passed away from complications from a bile duct growth.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.