Iwata had more successes than failures during his tenure. The DS, the first few years of the Wii, the rescuing of the 3DS, the birth of the Switch.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say the Switch completely vindicated Iwata's approach to gaming and Nintendo's "Blue Ocean" shitck entirely.

I still remember during the NX days where everyone thought Nintendo should stop the gimmicks and just make a powerful console that can compete with Sony and Microsoft for "core gamers". And the Switch... Ended up being the exact opposite of that. Yet it still became one the best selling and most beloved systems of all time.

The Switch is really not that underpowered of a system, it has 1/3 the teraflop performance of an XBox One, that's absurdly powerful, a PSP was no where close to 1/3 of a PS3 (and well below even a PS2) and the PSP was looked at a as technological wonder for its time (ditto for Vita, no where close to 1/3 of a PS4, not even PS3 performance).

I remember seeing a PSP in 2005 with Dreamcast tier graphics 6-7 years after the Dreamcast had launched and thinking that was unbelievable for a portable machine. 

A Switch can handle many modern PS4/XB1 era games, if it was a bit more powerful it would just flat out run I think almost all PS4 games.

For a handheld device that can literally run PS4 era games like DOOM Eternal, Fortnite, Overwatch 2, Wolfenstein, NBA 2K, FC Soccer, Mortal Kombat 11, Batman: Arkham, Witcher III, etc.

The thing is the Mariko based Switch systems really actually could be clocked higher to get more like 600 GFLOPS docked performance (with no other upgrade required, this is just the result of the die shrink), that would be able to run pretty much any PS4 era game at a pretty reasonable level if Nintendo had allowed that.

I mean shit, a Switch is far closer to a XBox One even as a portable, than the Wii was to the PS3 (an actual home console that had a giant power brick of a power supply). 

I mean yeah, in 2017 the Switch was pretty impressive. But even then, it still wasn't the super powered home console people wanted from Nintendo. It's an Nvidia tablet with a TV out. As a portable system, that was cool. But as a home console, it's still pretty under-powered compared to the other consoles. And it especially looks weak compared to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series.

PS5 was no where close to being released in March 2017. 

Switch is for its time of release, tech wise the most cutting edge product Nintendo has released since the GameCube in 2001 and then the N64 in 1996 before that, not even debatable. Tegra X1 was comparable to an Apple A9X which came in $800 iPad Pros for 2017. 

The Switch is a lot closer to a XB1 or PS4 than people think, if Nintendo let devs actually utilize the 600 GFLOPS a Mariko/Lite/OLED models can hit, they'd basically be able to run any PS4 game fairly well at that but even at the OG spec the fact that it can run things like DOOM Eternal and Dragon Quest XI is bonkers. 

This is why I also said a "Switch Pro" would be a tricky proposition because if you even increase the Switch's horsepower by like a moderate 50% ... it basically becomes a a portable XBox One essentially full stop, just at a lower resolution perhaps and if you do that, all of the sudden, like 100 different ports are quite easily feasible, so how's that going to work. 

It will be interesting this time with no COVID supply chain shut downs if Nintendo proceeds with a Switch 2 Pro maybe 3-4 years into the Switch 2's product cycle. I think it would be a good idea. 

See what I mean?  It's funny how back then fans had to beg for Xenoblade, while today we're basically drowning in the games.  Today's Nintendo isn't perfect, but it's amazing what new management can do.  I wouldn't be surprised if we got Mother 3 at some point.

I agree that the Switch had great performance for a handheld with its battery constrains when it launched.

But why are you comparing the Switch and a 5.5 year older PSVita both to 8th gen home consoles Xbox One/PS4 and the PSP to a 7th gen home console (PS3)?

PSP <-> PS2 and PSVita <-> PS3 would be better comparisons to Switch <-> to XBO/PS4.

The PS Vita also had great performance for a handheld with its battery constrains when it launched.

Yeah Switch is basically what a Vita successor would be.

PSP-between PS1 & PS2

Vita-between PS2 & PS3

Switch-between PS3 & PS4

A Vita wasn't really anywhere close to a 360/PS3 though. It's 28 gigaflops, and XBox 360 is 250 gigaflops ... almost a 10x gap.

The Switch is 393 gigaflops docked, the XBox One is 1.2 teraflops, that's only about a 1/3 gap.

So a Switch is much closer to the actual home consoles it launched against (PS4/XB1) than a Vita was (versus PS3/360) even though Vita was somewhat impressive hardware.

This is why the Switch can run actual modern-gen titles like DOOM Eternal, Hellblade, Witcher 3, Persona 5, Fortnite, Overwatch 2, Dragon Quest XI, FC Soccer, while a Vita was not really getting many demanding games from the PS3/360. 

The Switch is 157 gigaflops undocked, the Xbox One 1.2 teraflops, that's also almost a 8x gap.
The Switch is 157 gigaflops undocked, the PS4 1.84 teraflops, that's almost a 12x gap.

Since every Switch games has also to run in the battery constrained handheld mode, that is the correct benchmark for minimum specs of a game... not the docked mode. Undocked mode ain't optional for developers.

If the Switch had a low hardware based like PSVita and Wii U, most of these games wouldn't be on Switch either.