My wife plays games when she has the free time and is not in the middle of a book. She actually prefers our 360 to the wii :) She's logged like 80 hours on oblivion, loved Fable 2, Toy Story 3 and arcade games like plants vs zombies or peggle. She likes brighter and more colorful games, like MW2 over GOW, and Oblivion over Fallout 3; beyond that, as long as it's engaging she's not too picky.
She wasn't a gamer since she was a kid with an NES. She met me and I was able to get her used to the controller with simpler games like Tiger Woods golf and Fable 2 (don't remember what we played on the original xbox anymore). I think the hard part is getting over the learning curve of getting used to standard controls, which many of us forget even exists.
