I understand what you are trying to say, but its just wrong / not true
The quality of an opening cinematic has no correlation to how well the game does, or how fond people are of it.
The Starcraft 2 beta has no opening cinematic, yet its hugely popular already (say what you want, i'm trying to stay true to YOUR concept, and it has no opening cinematic now
)
Warhammer Online had an AMAZING intro, yet the game fell into the shadows (sad cuz i really liked it).
EVE Online had no intro what so ever, yet its still alive and growing.
Mass Effect 1 and 2 had no intro either (the ingame cinematic after creating a character isnt an introduction cinematic, its part of the gameplay), yet see how well that did.
When i look at an intro the first time i boot up a game, i honestly dont care. If its CGI, it serves as a few minutes of "meh, that was kinda cool" moments, and if its ingame it usually serves as a few minutes of "hm, why didnt they turn on anti-aliasing?" moments.
Then i always skip it, i dont care. Why would i want to repeat a mediocre introduction trailer, when i own and can play the actual game?
As for conveying the story, if a game focuses on conveying the majority of the story through an introduction movie, they are mistaken. Most people wont watch it, and that usually just means that the game has no story.
This can apply to Sword of The Stars + expansions, who pretty much only have a story in their intros, not in the actual gameplay.
Horrible horribly intros, yet those games did very well.
There is no correlation.
