Nintendo is a company that makes money. According to Financial Times in 2007 Nintendo made 1.6 million dollars per employee. Nintendo is a company that has not changed much throughout the years. Nintendo figured out a process that works for them, and has keep to it. When they started with video games they wanted to be low cost to increase market share and they have continued to do so. The Wii is the cheapest console of the current generation. When the NES was being developed they wanted motion control and wireless controllers, which they currently have. Rather than letting technology decide how games will be played Nintendo decides how they want to play games and builds the requisite technology.
Nintendo has always been innovative in hardware. Before the NES launched there were prototypes of advanced features. At the Consumer Electronics Show of 1984 it had a music keyboard, light zappers, typing keyboard, a tape recorder and wireless controllers. The NES even had motion sensing capabilities via the Power Glove. In 1995 Nintendo tried to conquer 3d gaming with the virtual boy, one of Nintendo’s failures. Many of these innovations were far ahead of their time. While specialty wireless controllers have existed for several console generations, it was not until the 7th generation systems (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii) that wireless controllers became the norm. The 7th generation is also the first to have an emphasis on motion control, from the Wii to the Xbox Kinect. The Nintendo 3DS will launch soon, returning Nintendo to 3d gaming. With the GameCube Nintendo was able to try out other innovations, such as using Gameboy Advances as controls to give players different information.
Lastly I’m not sure how to source my knowledge about the NES at CES, the info is from a sign at Nintendo World in NYC, you can find some pictures of it at http://www.nesworld.com