Nintendo always put gameplay first and sacrifice storyline and such?

[Squilliam]

I think they sacraficed story because in non cinematic games storyline is less important. In addition to this stories are subjective so including less story means you can encompass a wider audience. Gameplay is more a universal property of games and its the metric which their games stand or fall on.

For example you may not like Uncharted 2's storyline and therefore you're less likely to enjoy the game because it makes up a significant part of the overall experience. Not only that but the top of the sales charts is where they want to be and there are very few story based games which make it to the top league there.