Valve, developer of Half-Life, has gone on record with some very positive Nintendo praise.  They mention Nintendo as one of their motivations for their new game, Portal.  Check it out:

“We wanted our game to have the Nintendo factor,” she told the GDC audience. “We wanted to create one piece of gameplay that could be used for a whole bunch of different things.  So for example Mario jumps, but with that jump people can do a whole bunch of other things; he can jump on enemies, he can break blocks, he can collect power ups. We wanted the same thing in Narbacular drop too - we wanted portals to be used not just to run away but to be used for a whole bunch of other things.”

The “Nintendo factor” seems to be turning heads lately as the Wii/DS have been growing ever popular with consumers and developers.   Now all we need is Half-Life for the Wii!

Source: CVG