Every year, market researchers Interbrand publish a little chart. Amongst marketing types, it's very important. They compile what they believe are the top 100 "hottest" brands in the world, and rank them in order of, well, "hotness". Any and all brand names are eligible, so the top of the list is dominated by names like Coke, IBM, Microsoft McDonalds. But cast your eyes down the list to #40 and you'll see little old Nintendo. No doubt thanks to the continued success of the Wii and DS, they moved up four places from the 2007 list, one spot behind Kellogs and one spot ahead of...Swiss financial services firm UBS. They're the only games-specific "brand" to make the list; both Sony (#25) and Microsoft (#3) are present, but they're of course there primarily for other stuff.