Nintendo, often taking the riskier routes.

Because they are the ones that actually made it work and made it become standard.

I'd say Nintendo.

If you kinda think of them as athletes, Nintendo is the guy who is more naturally gifted, but sometimes gets lazy with his training/effort level and gets easily distracted.

Sony is the athlete that has less raw talent/gifted ability, but they simply put their nose to the grinder and work hard step by step, so by sheer execution they're able to have good success. Nothing fancy about it though.

Microsoft is the guy who wants to be Sony, lol, but isn't quite as good most of the time.

Nintendo is Brett Favre.  He tossed a ton of touchdowns!  And also a ton of interceptions.  The Wii U is Nintendo's version of throwing 6 picks against the Rams in a playoff game.

Playstation is Russell Wilson.  Doesn't throw that many touchdowns but has a low amount of interceptions.  Wins come from a solid team effort.  Still prone to the odd fumble, however.

Xbox is Tony Romo.  All the money in the world behind him, great stats, but can't win.  Makes big mistakes at crucial moments.

A few things.

1. Not really. Analog sticks were the most common way for people play games even back in the late 70's.

2. The N64 doesn't acutally have an analog stick. It's digital. (I know, minor issue)

3. The N64 wasn't even the first gamepad to use analog sticks since Sony released their Joystick 2 months earlier.

4. I also wouldn't call it a real innovation by them since they only beat Sega to market by like 2 weeks. They just happened to launch first, so it wasn't like Sega was following Nintendos lead.

5. The industry didn't end up adopting that style of control stick. It wasn't until dual analog controllers came out in 1997 that sticks would catch on.

Probably Nintendo, they've been around a lot longer and seem to try and innovate with each console/handheld they release while the other two seem happy with just upping the power of their consoles (which isn't a bad thing either btw)