It is a simplification (obviously as he can't go into much detail in a more laid back article), but the X/Y axis definitely shows in a lot of his games. Final Fantasy since 3 has been trending towards a more of a focus on story which peaked towards 6. He wanted to achieve the balance between the two with Xenogears, but almost ironically, all those development cuts forced him towards a more story approach for that game, sacrificing a lot in the gameplay department towards disc 2 and losing that balance. Then when he got to Xenosaga he got stuck with game dev rookies that weren't really good at programming, so likewise he had to take a much more story focused approach and rip a lot of gameplay elements from Xenogears. It wasn't really until Xenosaga 3 where him and the team hit their stride and made one of the best paced JRPGs ever between Story/Gameplay. And that same trend shows in something like Xenoblade which has less emphasis towards building an overly complex story and maintains a good balance between the two.
Its such a fascinating analogy that really explains a lot for the direction he took behind each of the games and how it felt like he couldn't make the perfect game he wanted until Xenoblade.