being 'unique' has cost nintendo every recent generation!!!!

[Salnax]

The NES was not successful because it was the same as its peers. Its controller was very different from the joystick-likes contemporaries had. The Master System came out two years after the Famicom. And the NES had very little competition anyway.


The SNES was fairly similar to its competition. But this did not make the SNES a hit. The SNES fell in North America from the NES's 33 million to 23 million.

The GameCube was not a success. It barely broke 20 million and was largely irrelevant for the last third of its life. Despite it being much like its contemporaries.

The Wii was very unique and was the most successful console Nintendo ever made. Ire from gamers mattered little when they hadn't bought the GameCube anyway. If anything, the Wii was the console that placed the most emphasis on games, rather than multimedia compatibility.

The Wii U has a normal controller with a tablet in the middle, the combination of two familiar interfaces.