This is not to debate the merit of Nintendo being an innovator, but more on their philosophy and evolution to their approach on HW. We can view this in generational pairs IMO.
NES-SNES
N64-GCN
Wii-WiiU
also
Gameboy era (89-04)
DS era (04-16?)
NES had a standard and its natural evolution was the SNES with more buttons. N64 was a bigger leap with 3D gaming and analog control. The small evolution to GCN was the separate C buttons now combined to form the right analog or now dual analog control. Wii was obviously a huge change and evolution to Wii U was more of an add on , so clearly nintendo rides the wave rather than come up with something new every gen.
You may or may not agree with this pattern, but judging by Nintendo's history IMO they will shake things up for sure.
