Nintendo

The president of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata, has died at the age of 55, according to a press release from the company.

“Nintendo Co., Ltd. deeply regrets to announce that President Satoru Iwata passed away on July 11, 2015 due to a bile duct growth,” reads the statement.

Iwata underwent surgery last year to remove the growth and had resumed his duties after a brief period of recovery.

Nintendo’s 3DS has been on the market for what’s coming up on four years now yet somehow, modding enthusiasts have been unable to find a pure software hack that allows the portable console to run homebrew games.

That all changed this week, however, as 22-year-old Jordan Rabet revealed the results of his year-long quest to crack the 3DS’ previously impenetrable security.

Unlike video game publisher Take-Two Interactive (NASDAQ: TTWO) or Activision-Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI) , Nintendo (NASDAQOTH: NTDOY) only releases games for the consoles it makes, a strategy reiterated earlier this week by Nintendo of America's President Reggie Fils-Aime. In an interview with KING 5 News, Fils-Aime defended his company's policy, stressing that Nintendo will not be bringing Super Mario to Apple's iOS platform anytime soon.

Expect to see a number of unhappy faces at Nintendo headquarters this weekend – at least, wherever Nintendo's legal team sits – as the company has officially lost an appeal with the World Intellectual Property Organization over the rights to the domain name wiiu.com.

Didn't expect to see that one coming, eh?

The Nintendo 3DS has proved a tough nut to crack, but hackers have finally managed to get the system to run homebrew code. Back on December 16, hacker Yellows8 posted images of the 3DS with the screen displaying the text "We hacked it!" At the time, the 3DS was only capable of displaying text, but that has changed.

Nintendo's new games console, the Wii U, has apparently had its user network cracked within hours of the machine's retail release, and by only a regular end user who reached debug menus by accident.

A poster going by the name of Trike on gaming forum NeoGAF claims the discovery of hidden admin content while attempting to add contacts to a friends list on the Wii U, and has made public some of the findings, including a list of what appears to be unannounced games content to be released for the machine.

Nintendo said Monday that it has sold 5 million 3DS handheld game consoles in Japan, which it says makes the device the fastest-selling game platform ever in the country.

The Kyoto-based firm said the console reached the landmark Sunday, less than a year after its launch on Feb. 26, 2011. It said the number was based on estimates from data it obtained directly from its domestic distributors.