The key is not to innovate for the sake of innovation, but rather to do something that has a meaningful impact (ie something that people want). For entertainment and consumer electronics companies this can be a hit or a miss. Of course, even if you innovate something that people may want, marketing (ie telling people that your product exists and providing them with a pathway to getting it) is also crucial.

I am actually in the corner that believes Switch has been one of the more tame Nintendo systems in terms of innovation. Much like people like a powerful home console with good games for a reasonable price (hence why PS4 has done well), they also like a powerful handheld with good games for a reasonable price (hence why Switch is doing well at the moment; though I feel that price could be more reasonable). The innovations on Dual Shock 4 and PSVR and with the Joy-Cons/new pro controllers are just icing on top of the cake, by which I mean the system would not have done significantly better or worse without them.

There also certain systems that fail because of the innovations they bring (Wii U; although marketing also had a role in how badly that system did) or are successful in-spite of innovation (3DS; where the popularity of the 2DS model and the gradual reduction of games that support the 3D effect is a demonstration that many did not buy that system for the 3D; and the same goes for the PS3 and Xbox One's many media hub and PC like functions, where some of which were dropped and they did not really effect the system).

People always seem to forget that Sony did almost everything the switch is doing now, way back in 2011.
Along with other innovations such as custom key board & back touch screen.
Sony gets almost no love for championing the addition of Cross/Play & Cross/Buy thats available on the Vita.
The switch is a good game console don't get me wrong, but the mobile home game console feature has been done long before on the Ps Vita.

And even before that :

Sega Nomad (1995)

PC Engine GT / LT (1991)

I don't know about innovative, but I like it a lot because it is so practical.

Well to be fair the basic idea was even done before that on PSP (which you could plugin to a TV and use DualShock controller with) and Sega Nomad (literally a portable Sega Genesis). If you refer to my comment above, my argument is that there is far more than the innovation itself that makes a system (assuming of course people actually like the innovation). The Vita's main issue was support (or lack thereof), Sony essentially released this great hardware but many Western third-parties were not really interested in supporting it (which appears to be the same with Switch and honestly most other handhelds where large scale Western publishers just use them as dumping grounds for licensed games until the system sells massively well at which point we can expect, usually, some ports from Western devs) but Sony themselves did not really make up for that by bringing content to the system. Vita was essentially the flip side of the Wii U, where Sony brought most of its games to PS4/PS3 and brought little to Vita and later they even took some of the Vita's games and put it on PS4 (Nintendo brought most of their games to 3DS and considerably less for Wii U, and many Wii U games ended up on 3DS and now are starting to come to Switch). System's need to get their content from somewhere, if third-party support is not there then it has to come from first-party. A good example of this is Wii, which was largely driven by Nintendo's own software, in 2011 when Nintendo released considerably less in order to focus on 3DS, Wii sales greatly dropped. The PS2 is another good example of this, it had a long life and continued to do well even after the release of its successor because key third-party content was still released on it and an amazing backlog.

I think it is. They are imo the first ones to implement successfully a hybrid console with having full console games on the go.The modular design of the console is also very unique in the sense that it has multiplayer from the getgo. It instantly makes it more social than previous handheld devices.

I meant WiiU not wii

The innovative part of the 3DS was a big failure. Nobody cares about the 3D of the 3DS, most people turned it off.

I meant WiiU, not Wii. I screwed up my comment...

This.

And soime of the "facts" that they say are questionabler atr best. Puff peace nothing more.

Its all about execution.

Yes, Sony tried something similar as did Sega & NEC back in the 90s so the concept has been around for a long time but none of them had the flawless execution that Nintendo has done with Switch.

Its similar to Wii, the concept of motion controls had been around forever but again it was poorly executed until Nintendo with Wii.

The same argument could be made for VR headsets, those have been around forever but its just now becoming popular because Sony, Oculus, etc are finally able to execute the concept enough to make it appealing.

Innovate isnt just coming up with an idea, its also executing those ideas.