Shane Kim, head of Game Studios, should by all rights have little love for the Big N, given the intense battle for the mainstream market that the and the are locked in.

But, it emerges today, that Kim actually has a profound respect for the company, and the lengths to which they have gone to entice non-hardcore gamers, releasing titles it is difficult to class as 'games'.

"I can tell you how that conversation goes at Microsoft. They say, 'I don’t think that’s a game,'" Kim says of Wii Fit. "But the guy at says, 'I don’t care. I’m selling a whole bunch of that stuff.'"

Kim continues, telling VentureBeat "that it never pays to bash Nintendo. Rather, he said he loved Nintendo because it’s broadening the audience and is showing Microsoft what it needs to accomplish."

By Luke Guttridge