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The_Yoda on 17 March 2017
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sundin13 said:
The_Yoda said:

I just looked it up and i will concede that you are correct based on this definition of innovate :

"make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products."

By this definition then the big 3 are all innovating anytime they implement something with a slight change for example "pressing down on the analog stick for R3/L3" should be considered an innovation, adding a second analog stick would be innovation, moving the second analog stick off center would be innovative.  Previously I would have said they were just refining someone else's innovation but I guess I would have been wrong.

So Le Stick created motion controls and the WiiMote was the innovation.

I think that there is a bit of a bar for what can be considered "innovation". A change needs to be of a certain magnitude (although this is technically unquantifiable) in order to be considered "innovation proper" and not just "technically innovation". Basically, we get tiers of "innovation" that would look something like this:

-Stagnation: No change
-Iteration: Small improvements which do not change the overall gameplay experience (ie, Clickable sticks)
-Evolution: Larger changes which noticably improve the overall gameplay experience (ie, Second Analog stick)
-Revolution: Large changes which go down a seperate path of gameplay experience (ie, Motion controls)

When someone says "only Nintendo innovates with their hardware", I think using context clues one could assume that they are saying "only Nintendo revolutionarily innovates with their hardware". 

Yeah it gets into an area of semantics. What you and I may consider to be an innovation someone else could label gimmick, again semantics but this time coupled with perception. Although I would consider clickable sticks to be an evolution (by your standards) as they added two more "buttons" to the controller and are used in many games for sprint freeing other buttons for other functions without cluttering the controller further.  I would consider changing the analog sticks to rubber tipped and making them convex to iterative again going by your standards.

Perception is a powerful thing but by definition any change to the established norm even within a brand is an innovation. I would have to say all the big three innovate but Nintendo is the most daring with their innovations.