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Satoru Iwata, Head of Nintendo, Has Died At 55
An anonymous reader with the news, announced with a statement released by Nintendo on their homepage, that
Nintendo president and CEO Satoru Iwata
died of a bile duct growth on the 11th of July, 2015. The news is noted by Kotaku and by Engadget. Wikipedia notes that Iwata was the first of the company's presidents to be unrelated to the Yamauchi family through blood or marriage.
If someone asked me to name a tech CEO that really new their business, Iwata would have been the first name on my tongue. He played games, he made games, and he knew what made games fun. This is a tragic loss for Nintendo and the gaming industry as a whole.
He was a great man. Responsible for Pokemon Gold/Silver, Kirby's Dream Land, Balloon Fight, Earthbound, Super Smash Bros., and was CEO starting in the GameCube generation until now.
Born to Play
...sadly, no 1-up mushrooms in real life.
Cancer is hardly something you "cure". You fight it off, with a painful treatment, in the hopes your body outlives the cancer. Then you keep an eye on it, until it pops back up; rinse and repeat.
It's entirely possible that at the time he already had a terminal case, and the surgery (and the clear weight loss, possibly due to chemo therapy) only gave him a few more months. And we never heard about it because either he didn't want Nintendo's stocks to be affected by an uncertain future, or maybe he just considered it as his own burden to carry (Japanese culture and all.)
No doubt Miyamoto will be under pressure to take the position, shoes, since they both shared the same views about the company's direction. Iwata backtracked a lot with the NX hardware and the DeNA partnership, that was probably a sign he knew he didn't have much time left, and just wanted to try something radical before passing away. I wonder if the next CEO will keep this direction.
He will be missed.
From us, dilektely to YOU! RIP. Iwata san, may you find happiness in the forest of Hyrule, forever the master of Baloon Fight.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
It's not a tumor!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
A couple of guys ordering another round of beers.
He probably had cholangiocarcinoma, which is one of the deadliest cancers around. I know one person in the family who got diagnosed and had zero symptoms prior. Put him in the grave within 6 months of diagnosis. I myself have primary sclerosing cholangitis, which puts me at a high risk for cholangiocarcinoma. Having spoken with the lead hepatologist at one of the top hospitals in the US, I was told that they have very few cases that have been cured. In practice I was told that surgery is almost always too late, because the tumors can't even be seen in liver MRIs and other tests until they are large enough that it's already too late. This is way before you exhibit any symptoms. The long-term survivals at this hospitals were apparently in a study where they transplanted livers in cases where they had an early diagnosis, but the survival rate was still very low, which means that it won't make sense to waste a liver on these cases. In other words, if you get it, it's time to say people goodbye.
Japanese quirk. They don't say cancer; the word is taboo.
Not true, really. It *is* true that many types of cancer are difficult to cure, and that telling a cure from a temporary remission is also difficult. But there are definitely plenty of people who have had all detectable cancer eradicated and it never reappears in their lifetime. They continue to be checked because, as stated above, it's difficult to tell a cure from a remission where the cancer remains in undetectable amounts.
More directly to the point, it is, in a lot of Mario games, what Mario says when he dies.
Damn, someone's drunker than I normally am.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.