Apple did just fine when Jobs died also from cancer at roughly the same age as Iwata. Miyamoto can be likened to Ive. Both are the creative geniuses of their company and should never be the CEO as the mundane CEO daily tasks would impact their current freedom to espress their genius.
Also Nintendo have their new Nintendo Garage department. It is basically younger developers being trained by the older ones tomake great games. Their first game released was Splatoon and it sold pretty well. The idea od the Nintendo Garage and the Apple University you could say are loosely similar. To instill the long standing company traditions and expectations in the newer generations of staff and to keep new talent coming to the company all of the time. And as a by producty it's a nice way to have succession plan. Not for the CEO specifically, but more for the other roles in the company. It's always better to hire/promote from within, using people already schooled in the comany's values. Of cause at times outside hiring is needed to bring about change, but at least Apple and Nintendo have the ability to balance this out.
I do feel sad for Iwata dying. His genius was in programming and not design. In so many games, it was his genius that took all the designers ideas and made them reality. He at short notice often did so much bug fixing. He was one ofthe few programmers who really enjoyed playing the games too. His childish side really shon through. And it was great to see. He really ubderstood what all the target markets wanted, young and old. And he took this through to his CEO role as well. He understood and felt for the customers as gamers and fun people not just as ¥¥¥ like the previous CEO did. Replacing Iwata will be tough as Nintendo need someone who understands the ¥¥¥ side but also the fun aspect too. Nintendo since the 80's has always been about providing the customers with as much fun as possible and making enough Yen to do so. Maximising profits for the sake of more money is not in Nintendo's DNA. Finding a new CEO who understands this will be tough.
