Satoru Iwata impresses me more each day. This man IS what Nintendo has become today. I'll list some of the things he's responsible for since he became president of Nintendo. His focus on a blue ocean stategy has expanded video game audiences.

The DS

The Wii.

Buying Monolith Studios.

Sharing informaton on developing games.

Hiring Yasumi Matsuno.

Feel free to add to the list.

Building Nintendo to one of the top 10 corporations of all Japan.

Also Satoru Iwata may not come up with all the ideas but he probably has to approve them. If the Wiiboard along with Wiifit is a hit then add that to his list. Also didn't Nintendo's earnings beat out Sony for the first time in awhile?

Becoming the youngest company president ever.

I could be wrong but I believe that the greatest thing about Iwata's leadership is that Nintendo has been able to identify problems and react to them before they happen.

The Nintendo DS was spawned in reaction to news that Sony was developing the PSP and releasing it 18 months before Nintendo was scheduled to release a successor to the Gameboy Advance; knowing that this was the exact same position that allowed Sony to take over the home console market with the Playstation (and to continue their dominance with the PS2) Nintendo produced a console to compete directly against the PSP. I suspect that much of the DS' design was influenced by the need to be different enough from the Gameboy Advance in order to claim that this was not a proper successor to the GBA.

I expect that Nintendo realized that High Definition was not going to motivate the average consumer to spend an unusual ammount of money to buy a gaming console, and that the development cost on Higher Definition games was going to prevent Nintendo from being as experimental with their game design. From this I believe that they designed the Wii from the need to encourage people to buy a system which was not centered around graphics.

Not being this man:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshi_Yamauchi

In other words, being the first Nintendo president who became president AFTER they started being a gaming company. And thus the first one who didn't make boneheaded top-down decisions about the company over and over. And not saying such fucking amazing/terrible things as:

"[People who play RPGs are] depressed gamers who like to sit alone in their dark rooms and play slow games."

-Yamauchi




I kind of miss that batshit crazy old dude.

Inspiring a thread where people masturbate to him.

 You may find Kutanagi sexier, but this is the wrong thread.

Exactly.

On topic:

- in a recent interview, he said that Nintendo will no longer announce games years before they're finished; that's very good, I think. Phantom Hourglass, for example, was announced about 9 months before its release. Remember Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess? It was unbearable.

- Reading his interviews is actually interesting; he reveals personal views and concerns. He's humble. That's unusual.

- He seems to be well respected by third party companies

- Just a sidenote: If I remember correctly, the DS was planned before Iwata's reign.

Nice. You should at - the troll - to the end of your name. BenKenobi can you help with this?