Yes.

Kimishima (while considered an official President) could be considered a de facto interim President given he was only in the role for about 2.75 years (33 months). He was a pretty stable leader because the writing was on the wall for the Wii U at that point and Switch had already been greenlit. 3DS continued to be profitable through his time as well. 

Kimishima has very few, if any, failures that come to mind. 

If Switch 2 is a success (very likely). Furukawa will be a contender for the best. It makes me wonder if he'll retire in his late 50s to early 60s so he can go out on a very high note. 

Some people may want to discredit Yamauchi by stating he was anti-3rd party and allowed Sony to enter the games industry.

But imo, should people really discredit him for that? Nintendo even after Sony & Microsoft entered the games business has been more profitable than both of them despite not appealing to 3rd party developers. Nintendo not letting 3rd parties dictate their business has done more good than bad for them. Nintendo doesn't need to worry about money hatting developers to get certain games for their platform, 3rd party sales also make less money than 1st party sales, Nintendo wouldn't need to worry as much about 3rd party games stealing their 1st party sales and profit since they're not known as a 3rd party game platform.

I think most importantly though is that Nintendo being anti-3rd party means that they're free to make a platform that goes a completely different direction and creates it's own market anomaly. This adds so many benefits, Nintendo wouldn't need to worry about making a console that's similar to PS/Xbox in architecture and worry about pricing it at a competitive price point which can be detrimental since Nintendo would more than likely have to take a bigger loss on each console sold. There's no way imo that a competitive Nintendo console would sell close to what the Switch is at right now. Some people might argue that PS/Xbox wouldn't even exist if Nintendo was 3rd party friendly with N64, but that is false.

So tbh Yamauchi not being overly reliant on 3rd parties could be seen as a benefit.

@javi741 

It's a Catch-22.

Nintendo isn't in direct competition with Xbox and PlayStation, but nevertheless there is some overlap.

When Nintendo has a lock on third-party and on-par specs, they dominate. NES was mostly unopposed, with the Sega Master System/Mark III being just about the only thing that even was a blip on the radar.

SNES was not as dominant, but nevertheless destroyed the PC Engine/TGFX-16 and also outsold the Genesis/Mega Drive globally by a clear margin. 

If Nintendo catered more to third-parties than they do, Xbox would probably be destroyed, and PlayStation would have its days numbered. There would also be even more gross business practices by Nintendo, most likely. Their draconian policies, especially in the NES days, are documented. 

It's almost for the balance of all of gaming that Nintendo doesn't have up-to-date specs in the home console market with easy third-party access. Because again if they did, competition would shrink. 

But you're right, Nintendo still has been really profitable regardless thanks to the popularity of their software and very rarely selling hardware at a loss. Wii U apparently was sold around cost or even a loss for a time. But the sources aren't well-documented there, so if anyone can help that would be nice. It's likely GameCube was selling at a loss for a time when it had a price slash to $99.99 in early 2003. 3DS was also probably selling at least at a small loss in the early days of the price cut.  

So, you do make a good point that Yamauchi's treatment of third-parties could be seen as a good thing. 

It's not so much "discrediting" him as holding him accountable to for his misfires; on his watch, the N64 took Nintendo from the market leader to second place, and the Gamecube fell further to third place.

It took the arrival of his successor to bring them back to market leadership with the Wii, even if Iwata then subsequently lost that lead with the failure of the Wii U.

Yamauchi  was responsible for making Nintendo a power player in the gaming industry to this day, but we can't only acknowledge his successes and turn a blind eye to his mistakes.

But Nintendo hasn't really been "anti-third party" since Yamauchi retired. In fact, Iwata spent much of his career at Nintendo trying to clean up Yamauchi's mess on that front. In some cases it worked (DS, Switch, and to an extent the Wii) in some cases it didn't (Wii U and to a lesser extent, the 3DS).

Well, I would say Yamauchi was pretty consistent with performance. Iwata¨s problem was inconsistency. Yamauchi did not change the company's direction until the new direction was successful, whereas Iwata believed too much on the new direction. Of course, times have been a bit different during Yamauchi era than they are today.

That's the thing though, Yamauchi failed to adapt to changing circumstances, and as a result his performance suffered with the N64 and Gamecube.

Going from market leader by a mile in the 3rd gen to third place in the 6th gen isn't consistent.

I think Iwata's problem though was his lack of long-term planning, especially noticeable during the later Wii/early Wii U days. He was very much an "in-the-moment" kind of leader, thinking about what Nintendo as a company needs here and now, and less on what it needs in the future.

That kind of leadership is risky because while that leads to bold, on-the-spot products and successes like the DS, Wii, and Switch. A lack of a future-planning can lead to stagnation and aimlessness, as was seen with the last half of the Wii's life and the early days of the 3DS and Wii U. I think what he needed, was somebody to help him create a corporate strategy for the long-term future. For example, those Wii/DS profits should've gone to significantly boosting the resources of EAD and SPD as early as 2007, not 2012 or later.

For what it's worth, Furukawa so far has seemed keen on making sure the company is future proof, something that Iwata kind of struggled with. Utilizing the Nintendo Account for the next system, massive expansions to EPD, focus on small, strategic acquisitions, expansions into multi-media like film and such.

Well, Nintendo's been making videogame systems for 46 years, longer than any other company and is the only dedicated videogame company of those who are still making consoles. Which actually proves that Nintendo have been able to adapt. While Gamecube was doing like shit, the real monster in 6th generation was Gameboy Advance. It was discontinued a bit early in favour of Nintendo DS, but if I'm not mistaken, GBA was the best selling system the time it was on sale until it was replaced.

I highly doubt that even if Nintendo did everything right with 3rd party developers with the N64 that PS wouldn't exist. We saw that even with the SNES's perfect 3rd party support, Sega still took a huge chunk of market share from Nintendo and it's difficult to say that Nintendo could've really prevented that when they seemed to do everything right with the SNES, powerful system, great 1st n 3rd party support, ect...

PS whether the N64 was developer friendly or not was gonna be a major competitor to Nintendo, especially with Sony paying developers to make games for their system. Nintendo would then need to force themselves into an expensive bidding war against Sony just to get 3rd party games and way more price cuts to remain competitive which isn't sustainable profit wise compared to just creating you're own market like they have been doing for years now.