Satoru Iwata

From Freepedia

Satoru Iwata (岩田聡 Iwata Satoru, born December 6, 1959) is the fourth president of Nintendo Company Limited beginning in 2002, succeeding to the long-standing previous president of the company, Hiroshi Yamauchi. Iwata was responsible in great part for defining Nintendo's strategy both before and during the release of its GameCube video game console in 2001, a vision which helped Nintendo generate a 41 percent increase in sales at the end of the 2002 fiscal year ^[1].

1 Biography
2 Miscellaneous
3 References
4 External links

Biography

Early years

Iwata was born on December 6 1959 in the Hokkaido Prefecture of Japan. He expressed his interest in the creation of video games early on, and originating in an environment with a tradition of computer programming, he produced electronic games at his home during his high school years. The several simples number games Iwata produced, which made use of an electronic calculator, he shared with his schoolmates.

Education

Following high school, Iwata was admitted at the prestigious Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he majored in computer science. Such an environment allowed Iwata's technical expertise and passion for video games to be recognized and as such, he was taken a part-time games programmer at HAL Laboratory, Inc., a subsidiary of Nintendo, while still pursuing his tertiary studies until graduation.

HAL Laboratory, Inc.

In 1982, after succeeding at college, Iwata was recruited by HAL Laboratory, Inc. for a full-time position. 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 game. Iwata was eventually promoted to president of HAL in 1993. Nevertheless, he and his branch sometimes aided in the creation of Nintendo video games, himself on a freelance basis.

Nintendo

In 2000, Iwata took a position at Nintendo Company Limited as the head of its corporate planning division. When Hiroshi Yamauchi, then the company's president since 1949, retired on May 31 2002, Iwata succeeded as Nintendo's fourth president. He continues to help out at HAL as a correspondent. 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 last project was Super Smash Bros. Melee.