Yes and no. I mean Nintendo isn't exactly MUCH better, but they ARE better. Look at every Zelda game past 2006, and look at every CoD game past 2006. It becomes very clear that Zelda games are the much MUCH more original in each iteration.
However, that doesn't mean they're all that original themselves either. They do have an issue of milking certain concepts to death before trying something else. But overall, I do think they handle it so much better than the other companies.
Perhaps not yet, but at the end of the Xbox 1 and PS4 lifecycle, you're going to easily be able to compare them to games from the end of this lifecycle. You can even see it right now comparing any 360 or PS4 game at all to Killzone on the PS4. That game looks stunning.