Zuh? Actually the Wiimote was made by an American inventor named Thomas Quinn and it fell into Nintendo's lap only after Sony and MS passed on the tech, and half of Nintendo's designers didn't even want the tech, I believe it was Mr. Atushi Asada (not Iwata, not Miyamoto) according to Quinn who personally sealed the deal for the controller tech over the protests of several Nintendo designers. 

The Playstation 4 has more in common with the NES, the NES was basically just the first standard game console with the third party system setup, no one bought the NES for wacky control schemes like ROB or because it controlled radically differently from anything on the market; it was because it had hundreds and hundreds of games of every genre and all the third party content that was what drove NES sales, its library breadth simply dwarfed other systems because Nintendo had a monopoly on third party support. Graphically it was also miles beyond what people were used to with home systems to that point which was the Atari 2600, things like Megaman 2, Super Mario Bros., Punch-Out!, Zelda etc. were miles past Frogger and Pitfall on Atari. 

Wii U collapsed for many reasons but namely because you can't force controller innovation every 5-6 years like a drop of a hat. It has to happen organically and naturally and actually address a problem ... Nintendo become crazed for gimmicks and started going at it the wrong way, trying to create a solution that didn't have a problem. It's not a sustainable business model to think you're going to be able to make a new Wiimote type craze every 5-6 years, especially when Nintendo didn't really even develop the first Wiimote.

nope but, they should spend slightly less on innovative tech and put a bit more into specs
because now they release a console close to current gen in term of power, only for it to be far behind as the next gen from its competitors show up slightly after their release.

So I wish they'd release something between current and next gen.

It did though. That controller was a friggin' revolution back then. 

Not really it was just a different direction input, flattened out instead of a standard joystick. I was there in the 80s, lol, I remember the reactions to it. 

Sega Master System had basically all the same shit ... flattened d-pad controller, light gun, it even had 3D glasses. 

The reason why no one wanted the Sega was because it didn't have any freaking games other than some really good Sega games (the irony is Nintendo has turned themselves into "Sega" of the Master System era in many ways. But back then Sega didn't have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (which was a big fucking deal circa 1989). It didn't have Ninja Gaiden. No Blades of Steel. No Castlevania. No Megaman. No Final Fantasy. No RBI Baseball. No Tecmo Bowl. No Batman '89. No Duck Tales. No Mike Tyson Punch-Out. No Contra or Super C. And of course no Super Mario Brothers.

If you wanted to play any of the "hot" games of the day, you had to get the NES and it wasn't just Nintendo's 1st party games by a long shot. 

I actually specifically remember driving to the store to get an NES and my friends rushing alongside the car to yell "make sure you get the Nintendo not the Sega, it has all the games!", I remember too there was one kid on the block who's parents got him the Sega Master System and we all felt sorry for the kid but made fun of him anyway, lol.

Well I mean today that is basically the Playstation, Sony basically co-opted the real Nintendo console lineage because Nintendo made too many stupid mistakes in the 90s and handed them the keys to the market and Sony basically took those keys and locked Nintendo out of their own market.  

Master System came almost two years later though...

I do agree that the games were the most important factor for the success of the NES. But the Gamepad was still a massive innovation and really made a difference. Just for the record, I was also around back in the days and experienced it first hand. And for me it was an even bigger deal than the Wiimote or the DS. Those two systems also wouldn't have their success without appealing games, some of which were only possible because of the new input methods. 

You don't remember it well then. Or I suspect it's your propension to downplay Nintendo that's clouding your memory. Because the D-Pad was a huge step forward in controller input. It allowed you to hold the controler in a way that your thumbs would have way more possibilities and much faster response compared to the Joystick layout that came before it. The movement of the thumb is much faster than the movement of the wrist required for the joysticks that predate the NES controller. 

let's just illustrate this using pictures:

VS



One is much more comfortable. It's also much more ergonomic, and input are easier and much faster to input.

The reaction was clear. If you were really there, and weren't a toddler trying to figure out what your father or whoever else was doing with that piece of plastic, and if you're an ounce honest, you'll admit that it was a moment where everyone thought "there's no going back".

There's no reason for you to bring up Sega into this (Seriously, what the heck does that have anything to do with the topic?), but since I know you try to steer the topic away from what you don't understand, let me mention this: The Sega Master System having the same shit, as you say, is no coincidence. The Mark III came out two years after the NES came out in Japan in july 1983. The controller Nintendo had created made so much fucking sense that Sega discarded the SG-1000 and SG-1000 II analog sticks and opted for Nintendo's solution for the Sega Mark III,  the Sega Master System that was released in october 1985. 

Yes, Nintendo should just buy a Ps4 Pro, cross out the label and write Nintendo Max Power with a marker above it or where ever there is room and sell it as a Nintendo console. Boom! Sales go through the sky.

Did you seriously even use the term "d-pad" in the 80s? I never really heard that used much until really the SNES came around. It was just "Nintendo controller". We didn't care about any of that shit, we just played the games and the games were what was important. 

But it was never "ah man, you have to buy a NES because it has a d-pad!". Lol. You had to have a NES because it had Ninja Turtles and Mario and Mike Tyson and Contra and Ghouls N' Ghosts, etc. etc. etc.

I also had one of these bad boys, so it's not like the joystick was completely forgotten, and it wasn't like you walked into an arcade and went "ewww! Joystick! I can't use this". Like no one thought like that. 

The biggest difference in the NES to me and to many people I think wasn't really even the controller. It was that you were going from this shit:

To NES games that had real scrolling environments and real music (not just blips and bleeps) and even stories in some cases was monumentally earth shattering.

The d-pad itself though ... I mean by the late 80s everything had some variant of a d-pad on it, Sega had a direction pad, even those cheap Tiger toys, any kid who grew up in the 80s will likely remember these: 

There's a lot of 20-something (or even teenager) Nintendo fans who think they know what it was like in the NES era ... not saying you, but a lot of these people don't have a freaking clue, lol. The 80s/early 90s Nintendo era was very different. The PS4 and the way it dominates the market and is the defacto system for all the big games is actually the closest thing to what the NES was for its time.

Man, you make the case for me. You're saying it yourself. Nintendo brought forth the D-Pad and everything that came after adopted it.

It's like you don't even follow your own arguments anymore. xD


And TMNT (1989) came out long after the NES was a thing. Which gives me proof enough that you came into the 3rd gen consoles at a later age than me. Which means that your memory is that of a late 3rd gen adopter at best. So nobody should give any credit to your anecdotal "evidence".

What I'm saying is the d-pad itself wasn't what drove the NES or what made it popular. The N64 analog stick and rumble pak were copied too, that doesn't mean the N64 was the most successful system. 

The NES was certainly the PS4 of its day, moreso actually, it's dominance was absolute, Sega could've put two d-pad on their controller with a blow up titty in the middle and they still would not have been able to compete with Nintendo of that time. Why? Because they didn't have any of the big games of the day. 

Ninja Turtles, Contra, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, Megaman, these were the CODs, Destinys, GTAs, of their day. And you had to buy a Nintendo to play them. 

And that's not because of controller. Sega's controller could do all the same things Nintendo's pad could do. It's because Hiroshi Yamauchi was a brilliant ruthless son of a bitch and came up with a lockout chip concept that meant all third party support was basically Nintendo exclusive. 

That's why we laughed at the kid on our block who got stuck with the Sega Master System. Not because his system didn't have a magical d-pad on it. It's because he'd have to come over to our house to play Megaman 2 or Ghouls N' Ghosts or Metal Gear or Bayou Billy or Bubble Bobble or Baseball Stars or Super C or some 4-player Superspike V-Ball. Even though I had to admit Alex Kidd was pretty cool.