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Satoru Iwata

 
Satoru Iwata

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Satoru Iwata



 
 
is the fourth president
President

President is a title held by many leaders of organizations, company, trade unions, university, and country. Etymology, a "president" is one who Wiktionary:Preside, who sits in leadership ....
 and CEO of Nintendo
Nintendo

is a global company located in Kyoto, Japan founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
, succeeding the long-standing previous president of the company, Hiroshi Yamauchi
Hiroshi Yamauchi

is a Japanese people businessman. He was the third president of Nintendo, beginning in 1949 until stepping down on May 31, 2002. Yamauchi is credited with transforming Nintendo from a small hanafuda card-making company in Japan to a multi-billion dollar video game company, as it currently is....
 in 2002. Satoru Iwata was responsible in great part for defining Nintendo's strategy both before and during the release of its GameCube video game console
Video game console

A video game console is an game development that produces a video signal which can be used with a display device to display a video game. The term "video game console" is used to distinguish a machine designed for consumers to buy and use solely for playing video games from a personal computer, which has many other functions, or arcade machi...
 in 2001, a vision which helped Nintendo generate a forty-one percent increase in sales at the end of the 2002 fiscal year.

Barron's Magazine
Barron's Magazine

Barron?s is an American financial magazine known for its market-moving stories. With new content available every week in print and every business day online, Barron?s provides readers with a comprehensive review of the market?s recent activity coupled with in-depth, sophisticated reports on what?s likely to happen in the market in the days and wee...
 named Satoru Iwata one of the world's top CEOs, due mostly to the Wii
Wii

The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo. As a History of video game consoles console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3....
, Brain Age
Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!

Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!, also known as Dr. Kawashima Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? in PAL regions, is a Computer puzzle game video game published and developed by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS handheld game console video game console....
 sales, as well as a soaring stock.

ru Iwata was born in Sapporo
Sapporo, Hokkaido

is the fifth-largest cities of Japan in Japan by population. It is the cities of Japan of Hokkaido Prefecture, located in Ishikari Subprefecture, and an City designated by government ordinance of Japan....
, Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
.






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Quotations


As any game developer knows, the three basic food groups are Fritos, Cheetos, and Doritos.

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.

Software sells hardware. People buy game systems to play the games they love.

The key here is not what you are playing, but how you'll be playing.

This the Wii is the console where the big ideas can prevail over big budgets.

When you turn on Revolution and see the graphics, you will say, Wow.

Referring to the Wii, codenamed 'Revolution'





Encyclopedia


is the fourth president
President

President is a title held by many leaders of organizations, company, trade unions, university, and country. Etymology, a "president" is one who Wiktionary:Preside, who sits in leadership ....
 and CEO of Nintendo
Nintendo

is a global company located in Kyoto, Japan founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
, succeeding the long-standing previous president of the company, Hiroshi Yamauchi
Hiroshi Yamauchi

is a Japanese people businessman. He was the third president of Nintendo, beginning in 1949 until stepping down on May 31, 2002. Yamauchi is credited with transforming Nintendo from a small hanafuda card-making company in Japan to a multi-billion dollar video game company, as it currently is....
 in 2002. Satoru Iwata was responsible in great part for defining Nintendo's strategy both before and during the release of its GameCube video game console
Video game console

A video game console is an game development that produces a video signal which can be used with a display device to display a video game. The term "video game console" is used to distinguish a machine designed for consumers to buy and use solely for playing video games from a personal computer, which has many other functions, or arcade machi...
 in 2001, a vision which helped Nintendo generate a forty-one percent increase in sales at the end of the 2002 fiscal year.

Barron's Magazine
Barron's Magazine

Barron?s is an American financial magazine known for its market-moving stories. With new content available every week in print and every business day online, Barron?s provides readers with a comprehensive review of the market?s recent activity coupled with in-depth, sophisticated reports on what?s likely to happen in the market in the days and wee...
 named Satoru Iwata one of the world's top CEOs, due mostly to the Wii
Wii

The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo. As a History of video game consoles console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3....
, Brain Age
Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!

Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!, also known as Dr. Kawashima Brain Training: How Old Is Your Brain? in PAL regions, is a Computer puzzle game video game published and developed by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS handheld game console video game console....
 sales, as well as a soaring stock.

Biography


Early years

Satoru Iwata was born in Sapporo
Sapporo, Hokkaido

is the fifth-largest cities of Japan in Japan by population. It is the cities of Japan of Hokkaido Prefecture, located in Ishikari Subprefecture, and an City designated by government ordinance of Japan....
, Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
. He expressed his interest in the creation of video games early on, and originating in an environment with a tradition of computer programming
Computer programming

Computer programming is the process of writing, testing, debugging/troubleshooting, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in a programming language....
, he produced electronic games at his home during his high school
High school

High school is the name used in some parts of the world to describe an institution which provides all or part of secondary education. The term originated in Scotland and spread to the New World countries as the high prestige that the Scottish educational system had at the time led several countries to employ Scottish educators to develop the...
 years. The several simple 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
Tokyo Institute of Technology

, usually called or less commonly Tokyo Tech, TiTech for short, is the largest institution of higher learning in Japan dedicated to science and technology....
, where he majored in computer science
Computer science

Computer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems....
. Such an environment allowed Iwata's technical expertise and passion for video games to be recognized and as such, he was hired as a part-time games programmer at HAL Laboratory, Inc.
HAL Laboratory

is a Japanese video game developer that was founded on February 21, 1980. Its name comes from the HAL 9000 computer in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey ....
, a subsidiary of Nintendo, while still pursuing his tertiary studies
Tertiary education

Tertiary education, also referred to as third stage, third level, and post-secondary education, is the educational level following the completion of a school providing a secondary education, such as a high school, secondary school, or gymnasium ....
 until graduation.

HAL Laboratory, Incorporated

Satoru Iwata
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
Balloon Fight

is a video game developed by Nintendo. The arcade version was released in 1984 and the Nintendo Entertainment System version was released in . The gameplay is similar to the arcade game Joust by Williams Electronics....
, EarthBound
EarthBound

EarthBound, known in Japan as , is a Console role-playing game video game co-developed by Creatures Inc. and HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game console....
, and the Kirby
Kirby (Nintendo)

is the main character of Nintendo's Kirby created by Masahiro Sakurai and developed by HAL Laboratory. The Kirby series is one of Nintendo's many well-known game franchises, spanning nearly twenty games since 1992....
 games. 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 as the head of its corporate planning division. When Hiroshi Yamauchi
Hiroshi Yamauchi

is a Japanese people businessman. He was the third president of Nintendo, beginning in 1949 until stepping down on May 31, 2002. Yamauchi is credited with transforming Nintendo from a small hanafuda card-making company in Japan to a multi-billion dollar video game company, as it currently is....
, 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 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 latest project is the Wii
Wii

The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo. As a History of video game consoles console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3....
. 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
Mario

is a fictional character in video games, created by Game designer#Video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Serving as Nintendo's mascot, Mario has appeared in List of Mario games by year since his creation....
 series, and the Animal Crossing series of games.

External links

  • given at Tokyo Game Show
    Tokyo Game Show

    The is a video game expo / Convention held in the Makuhari Messe, in Chiba, Chiba, Japan. Like the Games Convention, but in contrast to E3 Media and Business Summit, the Tokyo Game Show allows the general public to attend during the final two days....
     2005
  • - A discussion with Nintendo President Satoru Iwata