I have to say aye! Sure, it's been rough waters lately for Nintendo, but he had such a huge success with wii, ds and now 3ds that he deserves atleast a chance to prove what he can do with wiiU to move systems.

It seems to me that most people don't realize that Nintendo's business model is different than MS & Sony business model.

Sony & MS business model is focused on selling as many consoles as they can and then collect royalties on each game sold for their console. They both also publish their own games, mainly to provide something which is different from the competition and which can only be obtained by buying their console.

Nintendo's business model is based on selling their own games, and their strategy for selling those games is to also manufacture the consoles on which they sell those games. They do allow third party publishers to publish games for their console in exchange for a royalty, but that isn't their core revenue source.

I'm sure that Nintendo isn't happy at all with the Wii U sales. They would have liked to sell many more, because the larger the installed base the more games they can sell. When they release a new game like Super Mario 3D world they do hope it helps to sell more consoles, but their main concern is how many copies they can sell of that game because that's what they see as their core business.

So how well has Nintendo done as a game publisher for 8th generation consoles? Here is the data I collected from vgchartz (from December 28) for some of the largest publishers on 8th generation consoles:

Activision: 1.74m PS4 + 1m WiiU + 1.35m XOne = 4.09m

Ubisoft: 1.27m PS4 + 1.98m WiiU + 0.68m XOne = 3.93m

Electronic Arts: 1.82m PS4 + 0.21m WiiU + 1.11m XOne = 3.14m

Microsoft: 0m PS4 + 0m WiiU +2.13m XOne = 2.13m

Sony: 1.7m PS4 + 0m WiiU + 0m XOne = 1.7m

Nintendo: 0m PS4 + 13.66m WiiU + 0m XOne = 13.66m

Even if you assume that 5m of those games were bundled with the Wii U, Nintendo has sold over 8m games for their 8th generation console. So, even with the extremely low Wii U sales, Nintendo is right now by far the most successful games publisher on 8th generation consoles.

Looking at those numbers I'd say that Iwata & Miyamoto aren't doing that bad with the Wii U.

Iwata seems a nice guy but this is business. Business has nothing to do with personal feelings.

There is no way anyone could have handled the wii u any worst than he did. The past is the past and no matter how glorious that past was his would be forever scarred by him being captain of the ship when it recorded it's first economic losses in living memory - if not ever.

Time for him to leave his post I would say but I do wish him all the very best when he (hopefully) goes.

Fire Iwata. Hire Miyamoto. Miyamoto was a dev like Iwata, so he knows how to respect them, he could still give gaming projects the "Miyamoto" touch, but he would be more hands off than prior. Also, Make Reggie the CEO of NOA instead of the COO. We westerners need more catering.

Miyamoto will probably retire soon for crying out loud

He never imlied he would. All he said is that he'd stop making Mario games.

people who dislike Iwata are probably hater or don't realize how good of a man he is and what positives he has done.

even though Nintendo has had a rough time he still manages to make Nintendo more valuable than Sony with only being a games developer.

people make mistakes but not everyone does what Iwata does when they've made mistakes. most people would fire people left and right and sell buildings and keep their salary the same while he is doing the opposite like building more buildings, lowering his salary and hiring more people and giving old devs bigger buildings.

so Aye of course

The Gamecube was launched under Yamauchi's watch. There are plenty of issues that can be hung on Iwata, but he wasn't in charge of the Gamecube. He wasn't even the expected to be named as CEO. Minoru Arakawa , the found of NoA, was the expected successor to Yamauchi. Iwata was the President of HAL laboratories at the time.

You clearly missed the early to mid 90s...

I think he should get at least the next generation before he should be written off. He led Nintendo through their brightest period (when they were meant to be doomed) and it's still not set in stone how this generation is going to pan out. Not many people thought we'd be discussing the possibility of the 360 or PS3 catching up to the Wii in lifetime sales back in 2007.

All it takes is that one piece of software that resonates, and suddely you've got a monumental shift in fortunes.

This, I wish Sony had this focus with Zipper and Psygnosys.

Also, Team Siren, why the hell assign them to anything but a horror game?