Satoru Iwata (Japanese: 岩田 聡 Hepburn: Iwata Satoru, December 6, 1959 – July 11, 2015) was a Japanese video game programmer and businessman who was the fourth president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Nintendo. He is widely regarded as instrumental in broadening the appeal of video games to a wider audience by focusing on novel and entertaining games rather than top-of-the-line hardware.