 Image copyright AFP Image caption Satoru Iwata was regarded as crucial to Nintendo's success 
 
 Japanese video game maker Nintendo has said its chief executive Satoru Iwata has died of cancer at the age of 55. And this was the environment that we worked under. Iwata passed away July 11 from bile duct cancer, the Kyoto, Japan-based company said in a statement Monday. The first president from outside the Yamauchi family since it started selling cards in the late 19th century, Iwata led Nintendo since 2002 and helped oversee a tripling of revenue with hits including the Game Boy Advance SP and the Wii. Iwata was a teenager when Nintendo entered the video-game business. He led Nintendo through the eras of the GameCube, Wii, DS, 3DS, and Wii U, and he worked on "Earthbound," "Pokemon," "Kirby," "The Legend of Zelda," "Smash Bros.," and countless other titles. Nintendo DS quickly became the world's best-selling handheld game console when it was released in 2004. In March this year, Nintendo announced a deal with mobile gaming company DeNA to start their foray into mobile gaming.
– It's "Game Over" far too soon for Nintendo President Satoru Iwata. The 55-year-old has died due to a bile duct growth, the company announced in a brief statement. Iwata, who started out as a programmer at Nintendo subsidiary HAL Laboratory in the '80s and worked on games like The Legend of Zelda, became company president in 2002. He had been having health problems for some time but was able to resume his duties last year after bile duct surgery, reports the BBC, which describes him as a "highly revered figure" on the gaming scene who was able to turn the company around with big successes like the Wii. The last few years weren't smooth sailing for the company—Iwata volunteered for a pay cut after poor sales last year—but profits are rising again as the company moves into the smartphone market, Bloomberg reports. In the industry and among gamers, Iwata was known as someone who thought gaming should be for everybody, and as someone who never lost sight of the fact that gaming should be fun. "Iwata always struck me as someone who genuinely cared about the joy of gaming more than anything else," writes German Lopez at Vox. "Rest in peace, Mr. Iwata, and thank you for all the joy you brought to my life."