Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has passed away at the age of 55-years-old. According to an extremely short internal PDF, the cause of Iwata’s death was “a bile duct growth”.
The full notice can be viewed in full below:
Aside from this document, Nintendo has not released any further information.
Iwata also missed this last year’s E3 presentation because of a tumour.
The games Iwata worked on include the Earthbound, Kirby, Legend of Zelda, Mario and Animal Crossing series.
While still at university studying computer sciences, Iwata did freelance programming for HAL Laboratory, Inc (famous for classics such as Kirby and Earthbound). After graduating he took up full time work at HAL and helped found Creatures Inc., a company thought would create create several entries in the Pokémon franchise.
The year 2000 saw Iwata move to Nintendo while remaining at HAL as an consultant and in 2002 he became the president of the company. After years helping the company ship the Gamecube, Nintendo DS, and wildly successful Wii, he became CEO in 2013.
In 2014 he halved his own pay after the Wii U had unexpectedly low sales, a move not many CEOs would be willing to make.
[Source – Nintendo, Image – Pure Nintendo]