padib said:
While you can make parallels in how they were/are dedicated to their brands and improved on the mistakes of past leaders, Satoru Iwata was more than a professional in the field of video games. He was also a very lovable, charismatic man who did the following rare things:
- Took the blame for poor sales of the WiiU and also a massive pay cut, this while president of the company
- Initiated interviews with 3rd party developers, building bridges with these people, these artists, with Iwata Asks, shedding this presidential aura (esp. in Japan) and humbled himself to talk directly to devs in friendly, casual meetings.
- Was courageous enough to be fun and childlike in his Nintendo Directs (which he also initiated), doing things like holding up a Donkey Kong banana and other light-hearted fun jokes
- He continued to work in complete dedication until the very end, his death
- He initiated the Quality of Life program at Nintendo, a program intended to improve the health and lives of people through the medium of video games.
While I see the parallels, there are very few leaders like Satoru Iwata, and we were fortunate to have him. I would not compare Mark Cerny to Iwata, as effective as Cerny may be in his management of Sony. Iwata was something else, that we can compare few people to.
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While I do agree that Iwata was a special human being (and one that will live on in his work for a gaming eternity) there are a few things that I think are a bit rose-tinted in your points.
1. Iwata took the blame for the disaster of the WiiU because it was his fault. Sure, a pay cut was without a doubt unheard of before, but the WiiU was in many ways a product of his lack of vision, of where the industry was heading, and one that cost Nintendo the dedicated home console market.
2. He initiated interviews/discussions with developers out of pure necessity. ~8 years ago almost no major 3rd party publisher worked with Nintendo, so they tried to reach out in as many ways as possible. This is one of the aspects Sony managed to beat them,m even during their struggles in the 7th generation. It was a nice way, how he handled it, but in all honestly turned out to be a bit pointless.
3. The Quality of Life program, from what I understood, had its fair share of development setbacks and failures, and the only truly tangible late result is Ring Fit Adventure, a game that was obviously born by those works. Still, it was first and foremost a profit-oriented endeavor, and not the humanitarian work so many people try to portray it. It was never meant to be affordable, and it was coined during Nintendo's troubled period.
4. Working until your deathbed, while it might seem noble (I know I will never have the passion for anything like this, ever) it is also a clear sign of workaholism, a deadly plague in the Japanese work environments. I am not willing to celebrate this.
Now, I know I might seem like a monster, pointing these out, but the truth is, but the fact is that Iwata was a man, just like everyone else, one who worked with passion and dedication his whole life, but one who had flaws and made some proven mistakes.
All in all, I think there is nothing wrong with OP pointing out the resemblance with Mark Cerny, and I think there are some valid arguments on both sides. Now, if the person would have chosen Bobby Kotick, that would be a completely different story altogether 
