Nintendo's Iwata who led through successes, woes dies at 55

The company's statement said Iwata died of a bile duct tumor

Satoru Iwata, who led Japanese video game company Nintendo Co through years of growth with its Pokemon and Super Mario franchises, died on Saturday after a lengthy illness, prompting emotional tributes from game fans and industry rivals. He was 55.

The company's statement today said Iwata died of a bile duct tumor.

There was a torrent of sorrow online for Iwata as a person dedicated to entertaining others. On Twitter, fans thanked him for childhood memories and for bringing families together. On some Internet sites, an image of the flag in the Super Mario game was flying at half-staff.

Nintendo America announced it was suspending social media activity for the day "in remembrance" of Iwata.

"He didn't just create technology. He created a whole culture," said Nobuyuki Hayashi, a consultant and technology expert. "It wasn't just a consumer product that he had delivered. He brought to people something that's eternal, what people remember from when they were kids. He was special."

Iwata, president from 2002, died on Saturday at Kyoto University Hospital. He had not been seen recently at game events, such as E3 in Los Angeles, where he was usually a participant.

Iwata led Nintendo's development into a global company, with its hit Wii home console and DS handheld, and also through its recent troubles caused by the popularity of smartphones.

His replacement was not immediately announced, but the company said star game designer Shigeru Miyamaoto will remain in the leadership team along with Genyo Takeda, who is also in the game development field.

Iwata had been poised to lead Nintendo through another stage after it recently did an about-face and said it will start making games for smartphones, meaning that Super Mario the plumber would soon start arriving on cellphones and tablets.

The falloff in appetite for game machines in the past few years was partly because people are increasingly playing games or doing social media and other activities on smartphones. Nintendo has repeatedly had to lower prices on gadgets to woo buyers. The company returned to profit in the fiscal year ended March 2015 after several years of losses.

Until the recent shift in strategy, company officials including Iwata had repeatedly rejected the idea of developing games for mobile devices, a market that they brushed off for years as irrelevant.