Well for one...

"In the late 1980s, he was watching his daughter with a Famicom and realized the potential that existed within video games. At that particular time, Sony's executives had very little interest in video games..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Kutaragi#Role_in_the_gaming_industry

No Famicom, no Kutaragi in gaming.

No Miyamoto, no Donkey Kong, no Mario, No Zelda, no Famicom/NES.

No Miyamoto, no Famicom/NES worldwide cultural insemination, no Kutaragi daughter playing, no Kutaragi in gaming.

No Miyamoto, no Famicom, no shift of videogame industry's capital to Japan, no Famicom/NES worldwide cultural insemination, no videogame industry period, no potential profits for newcomers, no Sony exec interest in jumping into gaming at Kutaragi behest.

No Miyamoto, no Famicom, no Sony/Nintendo partnership, no subsequent PlayStation & its descendants, no PlayStation father Kutaragi.

No Miyamoto, no Mega Man, no Sonic, no game design benchmarks, no hardware innovations, no advancements.

No Miyamoto, no Nintendo...no Nintendo, no industry, no legacy.

I could go on, you know. Miyamoto is just that important.

John Lucas 

You don't seem to get it, but I'll try to explain again. Without Miyamoto there would be no Super Mario Bros (the best selling game ever). Without Super Mario the console gaming business would have died off. Without console gaming there would be no SNES-CD for Kutaragi. Without SNES-CD there would be no Playstation and finally no Vgcharts with ignorant Sony fanboys asking dumb questions. This is basic history of videogaming.

And if Miyamoto wasn't influential, then why was he chosen by the TIME magazine to the voting and holds the second place now? Have you ever tried to judge things objectively?

Even if Kutaragi would have seen the mass market potential of videogames without Nintendo, he would not have been able to carry out his plans because Sony's executives thought videogaming was just a fad. That is why Kutaragi secretly teamed up with Nintendo in his early years of design. Kutaragi is more of a general thinker, he isn't a crazy creative person like Miyamoto.

 finally a anwser.

No bushnell No atari, no Nin video games, no Miyamoto. 

 http://www.gamedaily.com/canvases/gd/_a/feature-top-five-most-overrated-industry/20070321145009990001

other have similar thoughts.

 So that article says Miyamoto hasn't been producing anything new lately.

Yeah, I can see why they say that...there's a lot of Mario and Zelda over the years...

And even though I disagree, because I love the way the Mario and Zelda games play, I can understand if someone thinks Miyamoto is currently overrrated.

But even this article says they love Miyamoto, and they give him a place among "the elite" due to at least his earlier contributions. 

Seriously...even if you don't like him now, you're an idiot if you don't give credit to Miyamoto for some of the greatest games in the past 20 years.   Also, that list has Jaffe and Kojima on there too...so have fun blabbing about MGS4, and I'll just point to this article every time.

Hus, you can't directly compare Bushnell and Miyamoto, because Bushnell wasn't a game designer IIRC. Even if you equate Bushnell=Atari, the comparison doesn't make the case for you. Super Mario Bros (designed by Miyamoto) sold over 40 million copies. How much did the most succesfull Atari game sell? 2 million?

Miyamoto is the one to thank for Wiimote and nunchuk too. Sony's controller will change drastically because of the success of Wii, like it or not.

To BenKenobi: True, Miyamoto hasn't contributed that much to great new hardcore IPs recently, but what about non-hardcore games like Nintendogs? What about Wii Sports, which is basically a tech demo for Wiimote, which in turn Miyamoto insisted Nintendo to use? Miyamoto has tried with hardcore stuff like Pikmin and Geist too, but his creativeness didn't give any more talent to the design teams.

True, he certainly has been contributing his fair share even today.  I don't know how much he personally contributes with each game, but I'm sure it's enough.  Don't tell Hus that Pikmin is hardcore though...he'll have a hissy fit.

You mean Hussy fit :)

oh ho!

i voted for Miyamoto, but I feel J.K Rowling and Stephen Colbert deserve more recognition.

People seem to be missing that it's the 100 most influential of the Year, not ever.

So why is he up there? Because this year(2006 that is), saw the release or the Wii, which has just changed Video gaming forever. Now if we assume that that credit is entirely Miyamotos(and it isn't, but we like to associate things with an individual), than that is pretty influential. He's just completely altered a multi billion dollar industry, while at the same time opening gaming up to millions of new people. Sounds more influential than most of the people on that list.