TOKYO In September Apple has a new product launch - event in San Francisco. After CEO Tim Cook and other executives gave presentations, said a man of Asian origin and showed the audience what had worked.
"Let's see what emerges," the man said. "Yes! It's a Pikachu! "The audience applauded when the young man showed the popular smartphone game" Pokemon Go "shows on Apple.
This cheering for Tatsuo Nomura, 30, responsible for the development of the game were far from what he is like a child in the country China: extreme poverty.
Nomura grew up in a village in Heilongjiang Province in northeastern China. Before dawn, with temperatures around 30 ° C lower than he and his mother can push a cart through the village tofu to sell. His family ate mostly cornmeal.
Nomura, who grew up as Shi Lei, a young son of a woman who was one of the millions of abandoned children in China in the last days of World War II Japanese. Her grandmother married a Chinese man and had a child, the father of Nomura.
There were no cars in the village. Whenever Nomura heard the sound of an engine from a distance, he ran away from home on emotions. The life of a little boy was with an interest in the work, as things a dramatic turn when he was 9 that when his family "home" back.
They finished in Nagano Prefecture, about 170 kilometers northwest of Tokyo, where his parents lived. The child adopted a Japanese name - Nomura is the maiden name of his grandmother and Tatsuo is from an elementary textbook of the Japanese language. Nomura could not communicate with their new friends in Japanese. What unites them was video games. He still remembers the shock he felt when a friend let her play the original Pokemon game.
AUTO - the child's interest TAUGHT CODER finally turned to how video games work. he deserves a computer with the money newspapers and learned code has been acquired deliver. Shinshu University, he built his own "family team" - a console similar to the popular Nintendo Family Computer, known outside Japan as the Nintendo Entertainment System game. His scientific work in the supercomputer from Tokyo Institute of Technology Graduate School was estimated by US researchers, Satoshi Matsuoka professor who oversaw the research at Nomura in school.
Nomura joined Google Japan office and then transferred to the US headquarters of the company. He thought that Google Maps and search for Pokemon or Monster, would make a great game. Nomura was appointed responsible for the development of the game. Tsunekazu Ishihara, head of Pokemon Co., which owns the copyrights to the characters, Nomura said he has decided to lead the project because of the "diversity beyond nationality and borders. "
Google spin-off Niantic published "Pokemon Go" last summer; It immediately became a social phenomenon in which 600 million people worldwide. Citigroup US it calculates the young company, which had just celebrated its first anniversary, has a potential value of $ 3.6 billion.
Nomura life can like one of those stories from poverty to wealth seems the Americans love to hear. But it is grateful Japan and the US He believes he would have been able to get a good education, which went to the United States, where tuition is expensive. He believes that Japan has offered the opportunity to surpass him.
Since its inception, the United States people who are constantly looking for ways attracted. However, the country seems to be turning its back on the force. The Donald Trump reflects election as president.
Dreamers could now return as a land of opportunity for Asia? Perhaps with a small opening, Asia could one day say see, "Let's see what emerges. "
The answer may be a new economic growth cycles.
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