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Nintendo of Japan issued a statement on Sunday confirming the death of longtime company President Satoru Iwata on Saturday.
The brief statement, which was also posted at Nintendo's Japanese Twitter account, simply stated that the 55-year-old passed away "due to a bile duct growth." Neither the company nor Iwata had spoken about his health issues since the president was forced to skip the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2014; as Kotaku reported last year, Iwata himself eventually responded to fans' concerns about his apparent worsening appearance, telling them he was "progressing well."
Iwata had been a member of the Nintendo development community since joining the company's subsidiary game studio HAL Laboratory in the early '80s, where he worked on such famous franchises as Kirby, Earthbound, and Balloon Fight. In 2002, he succeeded Hiroshi Yamauchi, the company's president during its rise as a video game company. Iwata successfully guided the company into its incredible Wii era. In more recent years, he responded to concerns over disappointing Wii U sales by taking a salary cut.
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