It's a product of fandom as a fashion. there's a significant population of people online that feel like they can't fit in unless they like the same things everyone else does. these are the kinds of people who will wear Kingdom Hearts heartless hoodies despite having never played the games, call themselves massive Tolkien fans despite having never read the books, wear a t-shirt depicting a popular anime character despite having dropped the show, etc etc.

these are the people that journalists are trying to cater to when they insist that games become easy, or that's beloved franchises become ""updated"" for ""modern audiences"". In addition to having no imagination, they can't create new franchises because those new franchises aren't popular and therefore are not fashionable.