Also the N64 released in Japan after many delays in June 1996 (was supposed to launch holiday 1995 but the games were not ready) ... before the Saturn's 3D pad. So it's the first of the mainstream consoles to have an analog stick on it. I know that because I imported the N64 from Japan (had a launch day Japanese GameCube also) and was playing it basically a few days after it had launched there. I had beaten Mario 64 by the end of June 1996 already.
Sega/Sony/Panasonic/Atari all had their shot to release an actual 3D controller when they released all of their 3D consoles -- they were all clueless and just re-used the same ol' designs from the 2D consoles basically to start with. They didn't know what they were doing. Nintendo is the first one of that group to understand you can't just release a 3D console with basically a 2D SNES controller.
Even if the design is far from perfect it has all the core fundamentals a 3D controller requires, analog control for 3D movement, a dedicated way to control a 3D camera, trigger button, and later they would add rumble feedback before others as well. Those things all track to today's controllers.
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