• Business Week/Next Generation, Thursday, March 29, 2007 11 AM

Nintendo has been aiming to expand the gaming audience, but the means that Shigero Miyamoto adopted to gauge the mass appeal of games are quite interesting, yet simple (kind of like the Wii). The creator of Mario and Zelda calls his secret weapon the "wife-ometer."

"The wife-ometer measures one variable--the interest level of my own wife," Miyamoto says. With "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time" and "Animal Crossing," he says, "the wife-ometer went up just a little bit." Eventually, the hit title "Brain Age" "turned her into a true gamer."

Nintendo's corporate mission when making games now is expanding the audience by creating accessible and fun games and achieving balance and collaboration between the company's different entities. But Miyamoto reminds developers: "Corporate vision is essential, but companies don't make games. People do."

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