NintendObs Thinks: Ask Iwata.
Never thought I'd read two hundred pages in two days.
This week in France (which is where I live) launched the book Ask Iwata, by Hobonichi — Ask Iwata: Words of Wisdom from Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's Legendary CEO, edited by Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun —, under the title of Ainsi parlait Iwata-san : Conversations avec Satoru Iwata, le légendaire président de Nintendo. It is a compilation of reflections from the late president of Nintendo who passed away in July 11, 2015, a president dear to any Nintendo fan who has ever watched him say “DIRECTLY!!” in a Nintendo Direct, a format he personally created… and which is now widely employed in the videogame industry like many Nintendo creations but I do digress. The book was compiled by the editorial board of the daily magazine of Iwata’s good friend, Shigesato Itoi, magazine shortly known as Hobonichi, and is complete with two exclusive interviews on the man the myth the legend with Shigeru Miyamoto and Shigesato Itoi.
Among the insights you’ll find in Ask Iwata are how Satoru Iwata met both Shigeru Miyamoto and Shigesato Itoi, and there’s also a short mention on how he and Masahiro Sakurai made the original Super Smash Bros. on Nintendo 64, before Iwata joined Nintendo in 2000 to become the first president of the company not to be part of the Yamauchi family in 2002, exactly one hundred and thirteen years after the enterprise we all know as Nintendo was born. In the case of Shigeru Miyamoto, initially HAL Laboratory was ready to publish a game for Game Boy under the title of Twinkle Popo, which was already available for pre-orders. Miyamoto came by and told them it would be a bummer to launch the game in that state, so Iwata and his team reworked the game and made it into Kirby’s Dream Land we all know about today. With Shigesato Itoi, the exact opposite happened. Itoi and his team were working on Mother 2 (EarthBound) but weren’t getting anywhere with it. Iwata came along, looked at the situation and, to convince them to rework the game from the beginning, told the development team that, if they were to go at it the same way but better they would finish the game in two years, but if they restarted from scratch they would finish it in six months. A year later, six months to remake and six months to polish, the game was released, and that’s how Ness saw the light of day.
Once a diligent co-worker, Iwata became a one-of-a-kind executive. One could say the hallmarks of a great leader is happenstance, being called to lead when all other options have failed. It’s around 33 years of age that Satoru Iwata became the president of HAL Laboratory, simply because, aside from being one of if not their best programmer, nobody else could take the job. The company was under strong financial hardships, 1.5 billion yens in debt to be exact, and he turned it around in six years. The attributed reflex of a CEO in this situation would have been to issue massive layoffs; instead, Iwata sat down and had conversations with every single employee of the company, one-on-one. He personally pursued that policy in his division once he became a planning director at Nintendo, never imposing it on anyone else for such selflessness can only really be voluntary.