To say that the Video Game Industry lost one of the greats would be an understatement. I’m sure that everyone on this board has, in one way or another, played at least one game influenced by this guy, and chances are good that many of us have played several directly worked on like Earthbound, Pokemon Gold & Silver, pretty much every Kirby game up to the early 00s and even Smash Bros. Melee, among many others.
He will be missed.
I’ve always been a Nintendo fanboy but I never really followed the business aspect of it or the people that made this brand what it is. However, it is no doubt a sad day when great minds (visionaries) pass on from this world to the next! May he rest in peace!
Yeah. The really sad thing about all of this is that he was one of the few people in charge that actually got video games and could also actually manage a company. And right now the world needs more people like him, not less.
This is a massive loss for the industry, not just Nintendo.
It’s too bad Nintendo has become more and more irrelevant with every year since the N64 tanked against the Playstation.
I hope that whoever winds up replacing him is able to turn things around. More choice is always better.
A couple of problems with this statement. While it may have been increasingly irrelevant to some, on the whole, Nintendo has been doing a hell of a lot better than pretty much every other major oldschool game developer is currently. Namco got swallowed up by Bandai, Squeenix cashed in their ‘get out of jail free’ card just a little bit ago (though admittedly they aren’t in the straights that they were in at the start of this decade), Capcom = Monster Hunter and little else, Koei = ______ Warriors and little else, Sega = Japan Only and little else, Konami’s cashing in their last check and retiring to the land of gambling machines and love motels, while the rest are either barely blips on the radar, swallowed/carved up by either one of the above or a new contender or just dissolved like foam on the sea.
If anything, Nintendo’s situation is going to get worse before it has a chance to get better, especially in the face of the rise of the mobile market, the continuing pressure from outside markets, and Japan’s Console Space going the way that Arcades in the US did, among other possible variables.
It was a dark day for all of gaming to lose Iwata, but hopefully his is in a better place and not nearly in as much pain as he was in with cancer.
There are speculations as to who is going to take over the company, but a lot of signs point to Miyamoto.
I somehow doubt that Miyamoto wouldn’t be a good fit for that position. I’ve gotten the impression that he’s far more of the creative type than of the business type, and if the Squeenix of the last decade has taught us anything, its that creative types generally don’t do well in upper management. That’s also why the loss of Iwata stings so much, as he was one of the rare exceptions to the rule.
