It's not about sales at all. If you were honest with yourselves and truly saw what Miyamoto sees in his attempts at redefining video games and their context as something completely different then you would understand why it / he deserves credit.
GTA4 is the same game as GTA 3, thats been the one consistent gripe about it. Its not art when you do the same thing again and again.
“When we make some new announcement and if there is no positive initial reaction from the market, I try to think of it as a good sign because that can be interpreted as people reacting to something groundbreaking. ...if the employees were always minding themselves to do whatever the market is requiring at any moment, and if they were always focusing on something we can sell right now for the short term, it would be very limiting. We are trying to think outside the box.” - Satoru Iwata - This is why corporate multinationals will never truly understand, or risk doing, what Nintendo does.
