Satoru Iwata: A remembrance
Like many gamers, I was shocked to hear Sunday night's news about the sudden, unexpected passing of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. Just as Nintendo isn't your typical video game company, Satoru Iwata wasn't your typical video game executive.
It would be inaccurate to say Iwata and I were friends. We never discussed our families, we never met in non-professional circumstances, and we were often forced to do the pas de deux of a reporter and executive who have different goals in the conversation. But our relationship, which evolved over the course of many annual get-togethers at the E3 video game conference from 2005 to 2013, was definitely friendly.
What struck me most about Iwata was his enthusiasm for gaming and the benefits it could offer. That kind of optimism is hard to maintain when you're in a leadership role, juggling the constant demand from shareholders to improve performance and the many moving parts of a massive, multi-national company.
But in all the times we met, Iwata was never without passion — even when his detractors were at their loudest.
Perhaps that's partly why his loss is being felt so strongly by gamers. That passion burned brightly. By pulling back the curtain with the Iwata Asks series or opening conversations directly with fans in Nintendo Direct videos, he made himself and his company approachable. Even when he was marketing a product, it never felt like a hard sell.
For me, the best example of his unbridled enthusiasm came in 2009. Iwata had announced the curious Wii Vitality Sensor on stage at the company's press conference. It was a small wearable device that was never really explained by Nintendo, and ultimately, it fizzled out and was cancelled before release.
In our talk that year, after we had finished up with the standard questions and I had gotten the notification from the PR person that our time was up, he asked me if I had a few more minutes I could spare. Of course, I said yes.
He reached into his bag, pulled out his laptop, and brought up a video. It lacked the polish you’d expect from most Nintendo presentations, but it showed him with the sensor on his finger, playing some tech demos using the feedback from the device. It made it immediately obvious what the company was trying to do with the Vitality Sensor.
When I asked him why they hadn't shown this — or something like it — at the press conference, he confided that he had put the video together himself on the plane ride over from Japan, simply because he was excited about what the company was trying to do.
For me, that was pure Iwata: an executive who was so enthusiastic about the potential of his company’s weird new trinket that he spent a good chunk of his 11-hour flight piecing together a video that would ultimately be seen by almost nobody. (The PR person told me that Iwata hadn't shown that video in any previous appointments.)
Interviewing Iwata was always a pleasant experience — even when the subjects we had to discuss were less so, such as when Wii sales were in free fall or when the Wii U’s troubling performance didn't sync up with Nintendo’s expectations. Frequently, gaming executives get defensive when faced with situations like this, especially when analysts and investors are calling for blood.
But even when I had to push him hard on issues, he never got combative or took difficult questions personally. Far from it; he would be the first to take responsibility when things weren't going well. When core gamers complained the Wii had abandoned them, he offered an apology. When the Wii U sales were undeniably weak, he took the blame.
And on those occasions when our conversation would stumble into an area off-script, he was incredibly, refreshingly candid even if the answer wasn't necessarily flattering to him or Nintendo. As someone who has spent the better part of the past 20 years interviewing video game executives, I can testify to how rare that is.
Iwata’s illness kept him out of the last two E3 shows, and for me, personally, they were worse shows because of it. I'm certain I'll feel his spirit on the show floor next year, along with a lingering sadness when I'm touring the Nintendo booth, something that would surely tick him off.
Over the next several days, our thoughts will slowly shift from remembering Iwata to pondering who will take over in his stead. (The Wall Street Journal believes Nintendo's legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto is the odds-on favorite to take over, but Miyamoto has been pretty clear in the past that he doesn't especially relish that role.)
But frankly, there’s no replacing him. Iwata was a singular leader, a steady hand who held the world’s most famous video game company together by cherishing creativity over chasing trends. He was friendly, passionate, smart, and inspiring. He leaves a legacy that's going to be hard to fill.
I'm going to miss him a lot.
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