Yeah but yamauchi had a different approach. He wanted to compete directly wheras iwata wanted to use strategies to win.  

But its hard to argue with the results. It led to many billions in Nintendo's bank. Iwata made it so Nintendo was the only profitable console maker last gen. His strategy was so successful that both MS and Sony adopted a similar approach to avoid heavy losses.

Yeah, I basically feel the same.

Online "capabilities" may be a hardware decision, but I doubt what you think you are referring to are actually the technical capabilities of Nintendo's consoles. Nintendo's online offerings are quite capable this generation. Common complaints are usually about digital purchases being tied to consoles rather than accounts, lack of achievement equivalents, things of that nature, which are absolutely software decisions, not hardware.

There's some great insight at the beginning (starting around 6:30) of this podcast about Nintendo Wifi Connection (Wii & DS online service). Long story short, friend codes obviously had nothing to do with hardware limitations.

There's some interesting discussion to be had about just how much influence the President/CEO has over hardware design. It seems natural to relate Yamauchi to everything from the Famicom to the GameCube, to Nintendo's reluctance to make the switch to CD format among other choices. But giving him all of the credit would be doing a huge disservice to Yokoi and Takeda. Yamauchi didn't invent the D-pad or the analog stick. I think Yokoi made the hardware he envisioned. The Wii and DS do feel like they came from Yamauchi and/or Iwata, because they didn't come from anyone else internally at Nintendo. Wii remotes were made by a random Westerner who sold the idea to Nintendo, so the individual who 'bought' it would be the one in control of the Wii's future. The DS was inspired by the Game & Watch, a creation of the late Yokoi, but we can't really give him credit for the DS line.

What I was thinking of when I mentioned differences between their leadership styles was the way they treated third parties. Negotiating those kinds of situations is probably one of their most demanding responsibilities. Iwata couldn't afford to act like Yamauchi had, but Iwata was also probably incapable of it, and Yamauchi may have known that. He could have recognized that Iwata was the President Nintendo needed because of the ways in which they differed.

Anyway, Takeda is the apparent frontrunner for Iwata's successor, and he was the lead designer of the Wii. They share essentially the same hardware philosophy. He is not going to make anyones' dreams of an ultra-powerful NX come true.

Not any time soon..

No. CEOs are nothing more than figureheads for share holders bound by advisors. Why do people think a single person can make a difference in a multinational billion dollar company?

I agree.  But I believe the poster who i was replying to was implying that Iwata would have hand picked his replacement so expect the status quo. Yamauchi got anything but status quo even though he hand picked Iwata.  Im actually a little bit concerned for Nintendo right now. Not everything worked but I think Iwata did a pretty good job overall and he will be missed at Nintendo.

Even if there was going to be some major shakeup in Nintendo after this, which there won't be, it would be too late to affect the NX. No doubt the details of the machine are already set and it's more the difficulty in getting the thing into production and finalising things now. There's not going to be any huge shift here and definitely not for the NX.

As far as consoles go the NX specs are probably nailed down at this point. The only thing that can change is their approach to software, third parties and on-line services. At the very least I hope they improve on on-line services, basic things like gamer-cards for one.