FILE - In this Jan. 31, 2013 file photo, Nintendo Co. President Satoru Iwata speaks for the duration of a information conference in Tokyo. Nintendo stated President Iwata died Saturday, July 11, 2015, of a bile duct tumor in a Kyoto hospital, western Japan. (AP Photograph/Koji Sasahara, File)TOKYO - Satoru Iwata, who led Japanese video game organization Nintendo Co. by way of many years of development with its Pokemon and Super Mario franchises, died July 11 of a bile duct tumor, the enterprise stated Monday. He was 55.Iwata, president from 2002, died in a Kyoto University hospital. He had not been witnessed just lately at game occasions, this kind of as E3 in Los Angeles, exactly where he was typically a participant.Iwata led Nintendo's improvement into a global firm, with its hit Wii house console and DS handheld, and also by its recent woes brought on by the popularity of smartphones.His replacement was not instantly announced, but the company stated star game designer Shigeru Miyamaoto will continue to be in the leadership workforce along with Genyo Takeda.Iwata had been poised to lead Nintendo as a result of an additional stage immediately after it lately did an about-encounter and mentioned it will get started making video games for smartphones -- meaning that Super Mario the plumber will start off arriving on cellphones and tablets.The falloff in appetite for game machines in the past number of years was partly simply because individuals are more and more enjoying games or performing social media and other pursuits on smartphones. Nintendo has repeatedly had to lower costs on gadgets to woo buyers.Right up until the current shift in technique, company officials which includes Iwata had repeatedly rejected the concept of producing video games for mobile products, a marketplace that they brushed off for years as irrelevant.In March, Nintendo announced an alliance with Japanese mobile game firm DeNA Co. to develop video games for mobile devices.The firm returned to profit in the fiscal yr ended March 2015 right after numerous many years of losses.Nintendo pioneered game machines considering that the 1980s, developing 1 of the to start with machines and the hit Game Boy hand-held machine.Its primary rivals in the enterprise are Sony Corp. with the PlayStation machines and Microsoft Corp. with the Xbox One particular machine. [Visit here to get top of the line kernel with regard to Nintendo 3DS.]Each firms have done much better in adapting to the era of online and mobile games.Iwata succeeded Hiroshi Yamauchi, who ruled more than the Kyoto-primarily based organization for half a century, transforming it from a conventional enjoying-card organization to a technological powerhouse. Yamauchi died in 2013 at 85.Iwata was picked, with Yamauchi's blessing, and Yamauchi remained adviser for a lot of years.Iwata was a respected and preferred figure in the game marketplace, partly for the reason that he was relatively much more approachable than executives at other Japanese companies, who tend to be aloof and rigid in demeanor.A funeral support will be held on July 17. He is survived by his wife Kayoko. The organization declined to disclose other particulars of his family members.This posting was last edited on Aug 2015 by the jailbreak founder crew of R4 3DS.