Other companies (particularly in Japan) do have a “director” who is the vision-holder for the project, but that style of development seems to be more rare. But I guess my point is that I don’t think there should be an “ideas person” in a company – anyone in the company with experience could be using their knowledge and expertise to think up new ideas that are actually possible to make, and the best ideas would be coming from those people, not clients or investors.

You could take that further and say that because mainstream development is so focused on iteration and imitation that something like the Wii or WiiU, where they’re forced to be innovative, throws them off balance – this is why there’s a glut of bad 3rd party games on the Wii (and why it will most probably be the same on the WiiU).