I would say that him leaving would be a good thing, but I have no faith that they'll replace him with someone better. The company as a whole has problems with stubbornness and their philosophy; he's just the current scapegoat.

no,Iwata should stay with Nintendo forever.

If Mario Kart 8 and Smash fail to even restore Wii U to a decent sales level, I think it'd be understandable to get rid of him. He probably won't be gone anytime soon, though. He's hyping this reform of Nintendo for future generations..if those plans fail as well, that's when we'll probably see him step down.

Iwata's job isn't easy, who knows if there's anyone actually suited to take his place at the moment..or anyone willing. Miyamoto would not be a good replacement.

The thing to remember is that though is that the shareholder approval rating is not as clear as say, a presidential approval rating where it's 1 person=1 vote but 1 person=number of shares he has.

The Yamauchi estate holds 10% of the shares and Nintendo itself holds 9.7% so that's about 20% that's nearly locked up for Iwata.

I'd be very surprised if they oust Iwata considering he made them the craziest amount of profit in Nintendo history in addition to turning the 3DS around.

They'll give him the chance to turn the WiiU around.

I forgot about the June investor's vote, which has this quote making more sense:

(From the Financial Report Q&A) The titles we are preparing to show you at E3 vary from being nearly complete to still in the early phases of development but with the core of its appeal noticeable. Therefore, our strategy of focusing on software has not changed.

Nintendo as of recently focused on titles that were close to being finished on a developmental scale. Especially with Wii and DS, titles were revealed close to their release dates (within 6 months). This has waned a bit with the Wii U (with games like X), and I suspect that that's because Nintendo is trying to garner excitement and trust to both potential and current Wii U owners that games are coming out and they should be excited about their system's future.

We'll see if the system's future is bright with this year's E3. I'm sure many investors are eager to see what the future will hold.

At a age of 54 Iwata is actually the youngest person on the board of directors at Nintendo, the average age of members being 67.

This is the biggest problem right here.  Everyone is old.  

Basically this, for two additional reasons:

1) There is nobody who could succeed Iwata who does not already think like Iwata or was not hand-picked by him to be on the Nintendo board or have some position of merit in the company (no holdovers from the Yamauchi days who could advocate for a radically different direction).

2), which is pursuant to 1, is that Japanese companies very rarely, if ever, hire outsiders. A conservative company such as Nintendo absolutely would not, so you're out of options for people other than those listed in line 1

Yikes. Older than dirt Japanese suits trying to operate in a market that (at least with consoles) is almost entirely 12-35 year old Western males. Nintendo badly needs people in their 30s/40s on their board, specifically people who have lived in the US/Europe or know those markets well. 

It's not a surprise that Nintendo seems so out of touch. I also suspect this is where the push to go into Quality of Life comes from too, I have a feeling it will be majorly targetted at seniors, which is a huge chunk of the Japanese population. 

Actually I made a mistake using the old board of directors.   Iwata retired some representative directors last year and added some younger blood too.  

He is no longer the youngest member and the average age is now ~58.7.  Kaz and Iwata are also aound the same age.

Satoru Iwata - 53
Genyo Takeda - 64
Shigeru Miyamoto - 60
Tatsumi Kimishima - 63
Kaoru Takemura - 67
Shigeyuki Takahashi - 59
Satoshi Yamato - 55
Susumu Tanaka - 60
Shinya Takahashi - 49
Hirokazu Shinshi - 47

I think these are last years numbers so add 1 year to their age.

 
Kaoru Takemura - 67, is also expected to retire this year and Naoki Mizutani is expected to be appointed as a new director.