Soon-to-be ex-Nintendo of America marketing executive Perrin Kaplan reckons that Ninty got there just in time when it introduced the Wii to a public that was becoming increasingly bored of videogames.

"A major insight that Nintendo had early on was that they saw that gamers were getting bored, even though they didn't know it yet," Kaplan told Advertising Age. She was supported by colleague Robert Matthews, NOA’s senior director of consumer marketing, who touched on the gnat-like attention span of many people the importance of shorter games: "Just look at the way people consume entertainment today. The idea that you would spend hours playing videogames is just not real anymore."

Meanwhile, fellow outgoing executive George Harrison let slip some of the secrets that lay behind the outrageously successful marketing of the Wii. "In our PR, we've always done outreach, but in this case, when we noticed something interesting happening online - like the weight loss using Wii Sports - we would draw it to the media's attention," he explained. "The little things that kept showing up were picked up and blown out in marketing."

Not that GamerSquad fell for that old marketing chestnut, hah! Ahem.