Which do you think is Nintendo's most groundbreaking system, and why?

[Otter]

SvennoJ said:

archbrix said:

Both.

Seems more like a confluence of circumstances rather than groundbreaking.

Famicon launches in 1983 in Japan.
MSX fails to gain traction in the US.
Atari bungles up the release of Famicon in the US and starts a decline / video game crash in the US by poor quality management.
Nintendo parts ways with Atari and relaunches the Famion as the NES in the USA with "Nintendo seal of quality" marketing.
Full release in 1986 after 2 limited test markets in 1985.
Since Famicon launched in 1983 already, Mario and Zelda had time to be developed to accompany the US launch.

I don't see the groundbreaking part of the console...

Nintendo's marketing strategy was though, the "Nintendo seal of quality" was genius and as effective as Sony's "This is how you share your games on PS4" that killed the XBox One launch. That doesn't make the PS4 groundbreaking though.

I think you can measure impact as ground breaking. If it was Nintendo's system that set a popular precedent and introduced forever IPs that shaped the industry, then that is groundbreaking, even if there was no technical wizardry going on.

For me though, N64 >>>