Im sure hes a nice guy and maybe its not his fault, but as the CEO you cant just sit there and go well theres no market for us so were slowly gonna let the company die by bleeding money every year, If he doesnt know what to do to get back to profitability then yeah he should be fired IF theyve got someone lined up that can do a better job.

hahahaha!!!!

OT for starters he could NOT make insane forecasts that a child couldve known wouldnt be met.

I think he has done many things well. His major mistake as CEO was not re-investing the massive money earned by the Wii. They should have realized that Wii would be in trouble as HDTV's were taking off. 3 or 4 years ago they should have spent some of their billions in reserve to start or acquire some high-end studios that could make some system selling games on an HD system. They should have had 2 or 3 really stunning titles ready for Wii U launch in addition to what they had, and in other genres. They needed titles for the west and east both. Their cash reserves are doing nothing for them. Wii U should have been ready to launch and kick ass in 2012 (or earlier), but instead it stumbled out of the gate. This is a major mistake.

How Iwata recovers from this blunder, to me, should determine his future. If he doesn't have a really good plan, then he should go.

Personally, the only solution I see to turn the company around in the near future is for them to buy a couple major publishers such as Capcom and Square Enix, bringing those titles exclusive to Wii U and forcing fans to buy it ( and giving them much less reason to buy a PS4). Bold, aggressive and dirty, but it's the only tactic I can see turning momentum around until Nintendo's next device is ready.

He's letting developers ship content late to the Wii U.

IMO -- If the Wonderful 101, Pikmin 3, and Rayman Legends had made their way to Wii U at launch (as originally planned) or in early 2013, the narrative surrounding the Wii U for the rest of the year may have certainly been different -- not to mention higher sales for those titles.

I get it that Nintendo's handheld games require buttons to play -- thus the aversion to smartphones. But what's keeping them from creating a proprietary Nintendo gaming adapter for Android/iPhone? Or even a Nintendo phone?

I've said this about the Xbox One before (and I think it'll have the same problems as WiiU honestly):

-Partner up with a cable/entertainment company to give these things away. Namely the WiiU. People may not necessarily buy it, but will be more than happy to keep it if it's "free" with a bundle.

I think we've also hit "peak gaming" -- the commercial and production expectations are so sky-high that anything we'd used to consider a moderate success is now considered a huge failure.

Erm... you do realise that Iwata rose to the position AFTER the release of the Gamecube, right? And you do realise that he can't magically invent a new system to release a day after his promotion, right?

He rose to the position in 2002, not 2001. And within 2 years, they had released the Nintendo DS. Two years after that, they released the Wii. Creating a new console isn't a trivial thing, it would have taken about 2 years to make the DS, and it would have taken even longer to make the Wii. You can bet that both projects were started in 2002.

In the meantime, Iwata orchestrated such deals as the Capcom deal that produced Resident Evil 4, Viewtiful Joe, and Killer7. He almost certainly initiated the development of Twilight Princess (you know, the one with realistic graphics?). It was under him that Nintendo made Geist. It was the Capcom deal that Iwata orchestrated that led, in the end, to Bayonetta being made (Platinum Games were trying to emulate the so-called "Capcom Five" when they made Madworld, Infinite Space, and Bayonetta).

Blaming Iwata for the weakness of the Gamecube is like blaming Obama for starting the GFC - it doesn't make sense if you look at the timeline. It's like happening upon a small town in the middle of a desert when lost, getting one of them to guide you to where you wanted to go, and then blaming them for the fact that you were lost in the first place.

When things work, people tend not to see them as bad things.  Its clear that in the past Nintendo could have gotten away with bad console sales and have their handhelds hold them up, we are seeing that is not the case anymore.

If you want to talk about Sony make your own thread and stop sooking.

You got that right. 

100 billion operating profits, 9 million Wii Us sold at a loss, profit banking on selling software for the system (excpet there aren't any), and expanding as well as spending R&D money on projects not due until next year (both good long-term moves though) do not make sense as yearly projections.

I should say that I love Nintendo hardware and software, they are my number 1 favourite systems and games in this entire industry (and this is coming from a person who owns a large variety of consoles from different companies); and I also really like Wii U, the Gamepad works very well and I have come to really like the way how the second screen can unclutter the HUD and reduce needing to pause games to manage inventory. However, for Nintendo to be successful they have to price, brand, and advertise their systems properly they also have to provide better services (especially on the network side) and these are things that Iwata has not done a good job with (the pricing, branding, and advertising was stellar though during the Wii and DS days and the lack of this now makes me think that the marketing guy at Nintendo one day decided not to show up and no one noticed). 

I was going to respond to the same post, but you beat me to it, and doing so very nicely, I might add!