The current console cycle should drill into everyone that each console is its own mutually exclusive walled garden, with no expectations of compatibility between them. I think everyone got spoiled with PS1 games compatible on PS2. Since then, backwards compatibility (outside Nintendo) has generally been spotty at best, but usually gone.

Nintendo has an advantage in that their hardware is generally cheaper than the competition so they don't have to muck around with software based backwards compatibility. They just put the hardware from the old console inside the new one. The Wii is a Gamecube. The DS is a GBA.

> They just put the hardware from the old console inside the new one.

That's pretty easy to do when you don't switch CPU architectures every generation, and the new chips are (mostly) a faster version of the old ones. Gamecube, Wii, and Wii U all have a PowerPC CPU in them, with an AMD (ATI) GPU.

forward compatible with a console released 7 years apart?

It shows how different the clientele of Nintendo is, since they change the controllers at every new iteration.

For a controller, sure. The current controller has all the buttons the old controller has. They are both USB/bluetooth. Most games need a one or two sticks and the standard buttons. There is no reason they couldn't develop a system to cover a grand total of two controller specs, both of which they created and which probably have a 90+% overlap.

I'll stick to my PC, where every controller works.

> I'll stick to my PC, where every controller works.

Your PC still has a 15 pin gameport and a 9/25 pin serial?

Nintendo does backwards compatibility a lot better than Sony. Consoles have been compatible with the previous generation since the Wii (which would play Gamecube games) and handhelds have always compatible with the previous generation, from the Game Boy Color all the way to New 3DS.

The SNES was actually supposed to play NES games as well, but that ended up getting dropped.