I'm not sure that's really fair.

- Nintendo experimented with a CD add on (with Sony) for the SNES. It eventually became the Playstation. - They released the Double Density Drive addon for N64 (probably a failure). - Mario 64 was the first really 3D platformer, and was groundbreaking. - The weird looking controller for the N64 had an analogue stick before anyone else. - Rumble packs - N64 came with four ports for four-way split screens

They're just off the top of my head.

It's not fair. Nintendo has a long history of innovation. They may not have foreseen every shift in gaming, but absolute prescience isn't a pre-requisite for innovation.

In the cases where Nintendo "lagged" others, it was mostly for good reasons; an example is the shift to optical media, which Nintendo resisted because they didn't want the user to have to wait for load times. Ultimately, cartridges were proven to be untenable long-term, but that doesn't mean Nintendo was "not innovative" in their principled choice to prioritize user experience over giving game devs extra space.

They did not experiment with the CD, they commissioned it to Sony first and then Philipps and broke the contract with Sony suddenly and that's why Sony decided to make a game console by themselves under the help of Kutaragi. Yet they never released anything for the SNES in terms of CD drive, while Sega did have the MegaCD or SegaCD way before them.

Analog sticks ? Didn't Sega had the Nights controller with analog sticks around the same period, for the Saturn ?

Four ports... wow, that's innovation ! You mean, everyone else could do it with a peripheral, but because Nintendo suddenly integrates 4 ports on the console, they "invented it" ? You had 4 ports extensions for about every 16 bit console out there to play Bomberman, already. Nothing new, really.

Four way split screens ? Guess you never heard of Hired Guns? Yeah you can argue that was not real-time 3D, yet that was already four way, multiplayer split screen in the very early 90s. Way before the N64.

Seriously, consoles ALMOST did not invent anything, and if they did, it's usually Sega who was at the helm of innovation most of the time - they released a 16 bits 2 years before Nintendo did. They released a 32 bits 2 years before Nintendo did, etc...

Sony and Sega both released analog stick-ish controllers before Nintendo, fwiw. They might have spurred it though by showing it off really early. Which is also probably why the "revolution" aka Wii's control scheme took so long to be revealed.

I think this is a little bit revisionist. In hindsight, much of what Nintendo did seems common, because it has become common. Back then, stuff like the rumble pack or the analog stick or a controller that has directional control on both sides actually was innovative.

Who cares about controllers at the time - it's not like having a rumble pack changed drastically how you played games. I'm talking about game hardware. Nintendo has almost always just copies what other consoles did with slightly more recent chips. And in recent history, they focused more on the controllers instead of the actual hardware.

From what I can tell, the NES controller was the first gamepad to be used on a major console[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamepad#Third_Generation

There were joysticks with buttons way before the NES. Do you consider putting a piece of plastic instead of a joystick a major invention?

I think the fact that there were many joysticks before the NES came out, and many other kinds of input devices, kind of shows that the d-pad was a non-obvious invention. In hindsight, it seems super obvious, but back then, it was a major invention.

And the Atari 7800 controller from 1984 does not qualify as a gamepad? Come on...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_7800#mediaviewer/File:Ata...

If anyone is rewriting history here, that's certainly not me.

I think the relevant thing is the d-pad.

Could you expand on what you consider "innovation" because I'm struggling to see how old nintendo, with their invention/pioneering of basically every part of the standard modern controller doesn't fit into my definition.

Are you just focusing on controllers? Like nothing else matters?