Rather than having to pitch a video game idea and hope for funding, developers and skilled hobbyists can now create the game they want on the side—then let the market dictate whether their idea had merit.

Soaring sales of Nintendo's Wii game machine have made former Nintendo chairman Hiroshi Yamauchi Japan's richest man, worth $7.8 billion, Forbes magazine said in its annual rankings.

Japan's Nintendo, maker of the hit Wii game machine, said on Thursday fourth-quarter profit jumped 60 percent but it forecast only modest annual growth of 9 percent as sales of its DS handheld machine slow.