Keldryn
Arcane
Very sad news. In an era when the major gaming companies are mostly run by "suits" who don't really care about gaming, Iwata was one of the good guys.
You don't see the presidents of EA, UbiSoft, Square-Enix, Sony Computer Entertaiment, or Microsoft's gaming division attempting to engage with their customers the way that Iwata did with the Nintendo Director and Iwata Asks features. A company president who addresses his English-speaking customers in a thick accent with the goofy "| directry | to you" bit is not a man who looks down on his customers.
As a few others have already mentioned, Iwata was likely one of the holdouts preventing Nintendo from jumping on the mobile bandwagon and releasing a flood of products on those platforms.
When asked why he did not initiate "corporate restructuring" after two consecutive fiscal years of operating losses, Iwata's response was: "If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, however, employee morale will decrease, and I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world."
From Sean Malstrom's News:
It was Iwata who was the driving force behind two of Nintendo's most successful hardware platforms of all time: the DS and the Wii. His vision was to get everybody playing video games. He understood a need to continue to provide challenging, skill-testing games for the hardcore gamers, but the need for "gateway" experiences. The games of the NES era were often very difficult to master, but they were generally easy to pick up and play, given that they featured two-dimensional gameplay and used a controller with a D-pad and two primary action buttons. Modern games are often the opposite; if you've never played a video game before, you need to learn how to navigate a full 3D world by using two analog directional sticks, four shoulder triggers, and four primary action buttons. Those who grew up playing video games made the transition naturally as gaming paradigms changed, and those who are exposed to video games at a young age seem to pick it up pretty easily as well.
The DS and Wii got a lot of adults playing video games before the smartphone and tablet craze got started. It's questionable whether or not many of these new players "moved up" to what most of us here would think of as "real" games, but I do think that Iwata was absolutely correct in thinking that there was a market being underserved by Sony and Microsoft. Most of that demographic has now moved on to smartphones and tablets instead of dedicated game machines, which happened much faster than Iwata -- and probably almost everyone else -- would have predicted or could respond to.
Of any companies involved in gaming, Nintendo is about the only one that I can think of where the person running it seemed truly dedicated to the long-term growth and financial stability of the company. Everyone else seems to change directions at the whim of their shareholders, laying off employees in order to meet short-term financial goals, then ramping up hiring again 6 months later when the next major project gets going.
You don't see the presidents of EA, UbiSoft, Square-Enix, Sony Computer Entertaiment, or Microsoft's gaming division attempting to engage with their customers the way that Iwata did with the Nintendo Director and Iwata Asks features. A company president who addresses his English-speaking customers in a thick accent with the goofy "| directry | to you" bit is not a man who looks down on his customers.
As a few others have already mentioned, Iwata was likely one of the holdouts preventing Nintendo from jumping on the mobile bandwagon and releasing a flood of products on those platforms.
When asked why he did not initiate "corporate restructuring" after two consecutive fiscal years of operating losses, Iwata's response was: "If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, however, employee morale will decrease, and I sincerely doubt employees who fear that they may be laid off will be able to develop software titles that could impress people around the world."
From Sean Malstrom's News:
It was Iwata who was the driving force behind two of Nintendo's most successful hardware platforms of all time: the DS and the Wii. His vision was to get everybody playing video games. He understood a need to continue to provide challenging, skill-testing games for the hardcore gamers, but the need for "gateway" experiences. The games of the NES era were often very difficult to master, but they were generally easy to pick up and play, given that they featured two-dimensional gameplay and used a controller with a D-pad and two primary action buttons. Modern games are often the opposite; if you've never played a video game before, you need to learn how to navigate a full 3D world by using two analog directional sticks, four shoulder triggers, and four primary action buttons. Those who grew up playing video games made the transition naturally as gaming paradigms changed, and those who are exposed to video games at a young age seem to pick it up pretty easily as well.
The DS and Wii got a lot of adults playing video games before the smartphone and tablet craze got started. It's questionable whether or not many of these new players "moved up" to what most of us here would think of as "real" games, but I do think that Iwata was absolutely correct in thinking that there was a market being underserved by Sony and Microsoft. Most of that demographic has now moved on to smartphones and tablets instead of dedicated game machines, which happened much faster than Iwata -- and probably almost everyone else -- would have predicted or could respond to.
Of any companies involved in gaming, Nintendo is about the only one that I can think of where the person running it seemed truly dedicated to the long-term growth and financial stability of the company. Everyone else seems to change directions at the whim of their shareholders, laying off employees in order to meet short-term financial goals, then ramping up hiring again 6 months later when the next major project gets going.
