The original Nintendo Entertainment System was released in North America in 1985. It was quite the revolution in gamin, and its controller did not take into account the ergonomics of the hand. It was quite pointy:

Fast forward 16 years to 2001, and the Nintendo GameCube shows how far design has come in understanding how our hands grip things and how best to design controllers to effortlessly fit human hands.

But now, with the Wii, there is the Wii Remote, or Wiimote. It is held in your hand like a remote, and there and several easy-to-reach buttons for most games. However, for other games, there are alternative control schemes. For example, in Super Paper Mario, you play the entire game holding the remote sideways.

The pointiness has returned. WIth Super Smash Brothers Brawl, there are many different ways to control the game. One way is to turn the controller sideways, which is, once again, pointy. Many gamers have said they prefer to use the GameCube controller with this game because of how much more comfortable it is.

Options are a good thing, generally. The Wii enables more analogous control for many games, such as Tennis or Bowling. But for other games, you need a more traditional controller. At least the designers of Brawl understood that the Wiimote is not the optimal control and allowed for others. Not all games allow for this, which means users are back to pointy controllers jabbing into our hands.

Miscellaneous Note: Controller design has been remarkably difficult for consoles throughout the ages. The original Microsoft XBox controller, for example, was a monstrosity:

It was rumored that the controller was too big for most Japanese hands, so Microsoft had to redesign the whole thing to be sold overseas. Whoops. Penny Arcade even made a non-work safe comic about it (NSFW due to language).