Satoru Iwata

Satoru Iwata took over Nintendo in 2002 when the company was stuck. They owned arcades and handheld games, but had no cultural relevance to a generation raised on PlayStation. Iwata was not a businessman first. He was a programmer and a gamer. The Wii launched in 2006. It sold 101 million units. Motion control let anyone become a tennis player or a conductor without years of practice. Grandmothers played alongside their grandchildren. The market expanded from 8 million hardcore gamers to 80 million casual players worldwide. GameCube made money on software licensing. We made money on hardware adoption at volume. 100 million consoles in living rooms meant 100 million people buying first party games.