Because gamers choose to pay for the worst part of the game, that comes at the cost of the rest of the game.. content.
What you see here is graphics, and game mechanic. What you don't have is hours of unique game content.
Trying to add story is expensive and fucks with ever other aspect of a game. Worst part is that if you did have a good engine, it's usefulness is only relevant to a few hours of game play, so you don't even have an incentive to make it good. You only want it to be so good as to barely support what the story demands. That leads to a strange mix of spaghetti and lasagna.
I think I see where you're coming from with the 'content' angle. Centipede didn't have a lot of content/bloat because it was distilled gameplay - art assets and the mechanics. I've always tended to favor 'plot' over 'story' in games. I guess that's why I didn't mind earlier JRPGs that were limited by how much text they could squeeze onto the NES and SNES. It was when they started doing all the things that fans wanted, like more backstory (key point, more 'story'), that game dialogue became so bloated and trivial that I haven't been able to stand many RPGs since probably the PS2 era because it all just feels like wasted time when I could be fighting monsters and seeing some of the level and puzzle designs.
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