It could be argued that the Wii was the first console where Nintendo was seen as the oddball of the industry, but I would say the Nintendo DS was the first system that did that, although the signs have been there for years starting with the N64.
The N64 was a machine built on principle whereas PlayStation was built based on developer demand. the N64 used cartridges to scale back on pirating and because gameplay was more essential to Nintendo than voiceovers and FMV cutscenes. The N64 was deliberately difficult to develop for because Hiroshi Yamauchi wanted only the best developers to make N64 games, although this move backfired. Nintendo also continued to appeal to children even though the industry was "growing up".
With GameCube, they realized that easy game development was the way to go, but still wanted a powerhouse machine. Since multimedia was starting to become all the rage (playing DVD's and music CD's on your console was considered real multimedia back then), Nintendo rejected this by making the GameCube a device that would only play games. They made sure of this by making the disc tray too small to fit even a music CD and deliberately had the title "game" in the system's name. It had a simple design that was very Japanese. Even though many people made fun of the lunch box handle, it was very practical. I guess GameCube was all about simplicity. It was a game machine and nothing else. It was easy to make games for and didn't have any complications when it came to developers maxing out it's power.
By the time the DS came around, Nintendo was already marketing itself as the oddball of the industry but that transformation was not complete. While GameCube was different from it's competition in principle, it was still pretty much like it's competition. The DS changed all this. When Sony introduced PSP, it was what seemed like a natural transition from Nintendo's Game Boy line. Sony just shrunk a PS2 into a portable device. After all, that's what the Game Boy systems were. They were shrunken little brothers of past consoles. Except Nintendo no longer followed this principle. The Nintendo DS was something of it's own. It was a big risk too. A handheld device with two fairly small screens that looked weird and was competing with what looked like a portable PS2 with a nice sexy 5" wide screen? This is when Nintendo made the full transition to the industry oddball and it paid off for them. After the DS, everyone knew they would pull a similar move with the Wii, but no one knew if their success of the DS could be replicated with their console market.
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