Satoru Iwata Quotes

I've always wanted to get involved with designing a video game.

One of the banes of successful innovation is that companies may be so committed to innovation that they will give the innovators a lot of money to spend.

The only way anyone's going to succeed is to build the product.

It is one thing to seek out new ways to grow your company and new potential streams of income from new services or products, but it is quite another to take on responsibilities that are far from your primary job as Entrepreneur.

Bayern want a decade of success like Barca. That's OK if you have the money because it increases the possibility of success. But it's not guaranteed.

When you're spending $100-plus million dollars, you need to give the audience what they want.

The answers to all a startup's challenges are out there. By setting up the right mechanisms for gathering feedback, the road to success can be a less bumpy ride.

One of the biggest mistakes that founders can make is doing something that maybe seems like a great idea, and seems like a good use of time, but actually isn't measurable, significant, incremental growth.

Entrepreneurs always begin the journey believing that they have the next big idea. They dream of the fame and fortune that awaits them if only they had the funding to pursue it. But the reality is that as the product is built and shared with customers, flaws in their concept are discovered that - if not overcome - will kill the business.

One of the degrees I have is in business, and I was a healthcare administrator that ran a 365-bed skilled nursing facility for years and generated several million dollars a year profit for them. So I have a background in business.

Engineering is the art of managing scarcity - it's easy to design and build a massive bridge that will last forever if cost is not an issue. Similarly, to build a new company, you must manage scarce resources.

In 2001, I did some research and identified four characteristics that successful companies share. One, they aspire to be leaders in their businesses. Two, they have global potential. Three, they are innovative. Four, they display a ruthless focus on financial returns.

If the business were a play, Act One is, 'Woohoo, bright and bushy-tailed. We're going to make something great!' Act Two is, 'We're six months behind on back-end development.'

All good entrepreneurs have to start somewhere with a dedicated plan to finish in a great place.

In our industry, there are so many competing companies and games, and they have people constantly out spying on competition. For example, Valve in Seattle tries to keep their location a secret.

If we launch a new product, we have to time it right. It's not about how soon you can do it but how well we can do it.

I think about issues. I use my economic training to devise solutions.

When I got to Activision, it was like a carnival. They had a recycling container filled with cans and a sign over it that said 'Activision Takeover Defense Fund.' Activision was making games based on passion and gut instinct. We needed to develop games based on P&L statements and what was going to sell.

I think the journey of making a game... we want to enjoy that process.

It's quite obvious that the 'Dark Souls' franchise is reaching a turning point, and I'm happy that I have a greater budget for the third game, as well as the creative freedom to make my own decisions. But if there were some restrictions about what I was creating, I definitely wouldn't want to work on it.

My entire career is online - I create games on the web.

If you spend £200million, £300m every year, obviously, even if you make mistakes, you have a good team, but without spending so much money, you can still improve and do well.

The most dangerous thing for an entrepreneur to do is to actually go into a business that he does not understand fully.

There are major benefits to building a game once and improving it over a long period of time based on user feedback and behavior. It's kind of depressing to have to build a game once, take all the user feedback, and then spend the next 3 years building another game.

When you keep things responsible and manageable, you can make some interesting movies that you maybe couldn't make otherwise.