Ha! "Mavericks in this industry" ? This must be a good joke. Apart from the Wii, there's hasn't been much innovation in what Nintendo does for dozens of years.
Even if one was to take "dozens" as two dozen, 24 years ago was 1990 and due to the month would be before the launch of the Super Nintendo in Japan, and the Gameboy outside of Japan. Which in effect means you're stating the only revolutionary thing that Nintendo did was create another MOS 8502 derivative powered 8-bit console in 1985, and introduce a d-pad and two button controller.
Thus you're not counting the Super Nintendo with things like shoulder buttons, the N64's introduction of the analog stick, etc. as innovative. I don't think you'll have many people agree with your sentiment.
The WiiU gamepad was nothing new, the same technology was already existing on tablets way before the WiiU was launched
Going to have to disagree. The closest Tablet platform analog would be the nVidia shield with streaming, which came out after the Wii U and the Vita functioning in that way which has only recently really been put to a functional state with the PS4.
The no-TV option is potentially revolutionary in of itself from a family/child use case perspective. The touch technology chosen is also pretty much ideal for the application. It's not designed for people trying to navigate the internet of screens too small to work without having to rely on hack solutions like multitouch zooming.
The 3DS's 3D screen ? Useless. It did not change how we play games or anything.
Star Fox 3D and several other titles take advantage with being able to perceive more depth.
they made the 2DS recently, because they realised people don't really care anyway.
The more common interpretation is that the 2DS was created as a reduced cost model meant to specifically target younger audiences that have issues with breaking nice things. An age group that parents also tend to be concerned about things like eye strain, and helped to turbocharge the launch of Pokemon X/Y, that launched on the same day.
And contrary to naysayers like yourself the platform has begun to take off.
Nintendo is the least innovative company around, they're from the most conservative part of Japan as well (Kyoto), and that matches very well with their attitude. And in terms of games, they just keep rehashing the same IPs and characters and series over and over again. Mario 36, Zelda 53, Mario Kart 12, Mario Party 79, no thank you.
Traditional Nintendo IPs include:
Metroid (Usually 1-2 per gen, but skipped the N64)
Donkey Kong
Kirby
Mario/Wario/etc. (Usually 1-3 per gen with significant differences)
Warioware
Zelda (Usually 1-3 per gen)
Smash Brothers (Usually 1-3 per gen)
Mario Party
Mario Kart
Paper Mario/Mario RPG
Pokemon (Usually 1-3 per gen)
Pikmin
etc.
Note: While Nintendo will occasionally do things in a similar fashion they usually take a radically different approach with these between games in terms of gameplay and story elements. The result is they tend to result in fresh games that just happen to have similar characters and some similar design elements, and hence the longevity of these IPs.
It's also simply incorrect to imply that they haven't been creating new IPs, or that they rely that heavily on their old ones. One of the major seller for the Wii was the Wii Fit line. Similarly Brain Age was one of the major sellers for the DS. It'd be more accurate to say they aren't completely negligent in taking the time to farm their IPs given some of them, like Metroid have actually skipped entire console generations.
There's also the question who you think is more innovative? Sony's consoles have been a line of media players with a relatively beefy slice of hardware strapped on, and their controller design pretty much has been sit in stone since the dual shock was introduced with dual analog to the PS1. Microsoft's console approach basically has involved making a kitbash PC with a controller whose design was pretty much laid in stone with the original XBox. SEGA's been out of the game since the 6th gen so I doubt you'd even be counting them..