Secret of Nintendo's Success.

From a recent MTV Multiplayer Blog interview with Shigeru Miyamoto:

On the other hand, we have a very large development team at Nintendo. And a lot of the members of our team play a lot of popular and more recent games. When they do that, they have a tendency to look at similar games that are out there and then they start to focus on: What can we do to make sure that our games are as good as those other games in a similar style? Whereas I feel that my job is actually to stop them and say, “That’s not the line of thinking we need to have.” Because, that results in us creating something that is more and more like those other types of games. My role becomes to put the brakes on and say, “We need to change our direction and way of thinking.” That’s the only way we’re going to be able to create something that’s unique and different.

Miyamoto gets it. He's one of the only ones.