Satoru Iwata was born on December 6, 1959. He joined Nintendo in 1983, became director in 2000, and president in 2002. In June 2013, Iwata-san was appointed CEO of Nintendo of America.

No successor has been put forward yet, but two Representative Directors remain at the company. Genyo Takeda (Representative Director; Senior Managing Director) and Shigeru Miyamoto (Representative Director; Senior Managing Director) will be taking over responsibilities for the time being.

While Iwata-san had taken off some time in 2014 for an undisclosed "health issue," he was present last month at Nintendo's E3 digital event, but it seems things have taken a turn for the worse since.