Japanese video game maker Nintendo has said its chief executive Satoru Iwata has died of cancer at the age of 55.
Mr Iwata underwent surgery last year and had resumed his duties after a brief period of recovery.
He is a highly revered figure in the Japanese gaming scene and considered the leading figure behind Nintendo's successful turnaround after he joined the company in the year 2000.
Most recently, he led Nintendo into the rapidly growing mobile gaming sector.
'A titan'
Mr Iwata started out as a programmer in a Nintendo subsidiary in the 1980s and became president of Nintendo in 2002.
Under his leadership, the company launched its hugely successful Wii and Nintendo DS consoles and he is considered the crucial driver behind the focus on easy-to-use consoles, a move that allowed the company to tap into a much wider audience beyond the traditional gaming community.
"Mr Iwata was a titan - he certainly will be missed," Marc Einstein, head of digital media at Frost & Sullivan in Tokyo, told the BBC.
"He was very much known for being a gamer first and a [chief executive] second - a game changing figure."
Mariko Oi, BBC News
Growing up in Japan in the 1980s, Super Mario was a gaming character that you couldn't avoid. But as the gaming population started to decline in the late 90s, Mr Iwata knew that he needed to make products that were more appealing to non-gamers.
And he succeeded. Nintendo DS quickly became the world's best-selling handheld game console when it was released in 2004.
Two years later, there came another successful launch of Wii which was dubbed the computer game that even your grandma can play. Together, they switched on millions of new converts to computer games.
But the rise of mobile phone games has posed a serious threat to Nintendo and some investors questioned his decision not to enter the market sooner.
As he put it himself, Mr Iwata was a chief executive who had the brain of a games developer and the heart of a gamer.
（德國之聲中文網）日本視頻遊戲巨頭任天堂公司宣布，總裁岩田聰（Satoru Iwata）因患膽管腫瘤於上週六逝世，享年55歲。該公司發表聲明說："公司總裁岩田聰因膽管腫瘤於2015年7月11日逝世。"大約一年前，公司總裁進行了腫瘤切除手術。當時公司通知所有股東，治療過程可能不會一帆風順。
岩田聰作為一名編程員開始了在任天堂的職業生涯。2002年，剛剛在公司工作2年的他便接任了公司的最高領導職位。
為移動設備開發遊戲
由於公司業績下降，岩田聰在幾個月前改變了迄今只依靠 遊戲機的經營理念。公司宣布，將收購研發了平板電腦遊戲的日本DeNA的股份。至今年秋季，任天堂將首次推出為移動設備開發的遊戲。去年，由於任天堂經營狀況不佳，這位公司總裁的薪水甚至被削減了一半。
最近以來，競爭對手如索尼和微軟已經超過任天堂。3家公司都面臨 視頻遊戲價格越來越低，甚至免費就可以從網上下載的問題。5月底任天堂剛剛宣布，企業在連續3年虧損之後，現在重新開始盈利。
公司還宣布，公司將由另外2位董事宮本茂（Shigeru Miyamoto）和竹田玄洋（Genyo Takeda）共同經營。
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