Unifying the platforms is just a way to keep games coming for more than one device. If all the 3DS could have been on Wii U too, Wii U wouldn't be doing so bad it did. 

When you deliberately poison a market sales will decline. Surprise surprise.

You're apparently still too young. Technically the industry focuses on 18-35 single male (as it has for the last three decades), once you have kids and responsibilities, there's really no way you can spend the time on todays videogames, as they're such a timesinks that give you so little in return.

Today I had time to play 15 minutes Lylat Wars with my oldest kid. I started playing Eternal Darkness again 3 weeks ago, and I'm already a whopping 6 hours into the game. Ninja Gaiden on Wii U's Virtual Console clocked 6 hours in just a couple of days, because the game was easy to pick up and play 10 minutes at a time.

Because people want to make money. You can't make money on Nintendo's system if you're a third party developer / publisher.

So when I say generational it's not so much that generations of gamers differ; its that gamers differ over which generation of games is best. There are plenty of 30 somethings and 40 somethings who prefer the 7th and 8th gen to earlier generations and plenty of young people who prefer the 80s and 90s. It's about when game design was best, not necessarily birth year.

And to be clear, nostalgia has nothing to do with it. It's about design philosophy, replay value, etc.

But this conversation is a perfect microscosm: we're both in our 30s and we have very different perspectives on the industry. You think gaming is getting better by the year. I think it's getting worse.

Except for everytime effort was put fourth and the game made money.

No, if they did make money they would've kept making games for it. Why would publishers skip out on money?

Not sure what exactly you mean by faith in gaming to be honest, but probably not..

More or less in the same situation for me. Just recently was I playing a few matches of Battlefront on PC for a few nights, each match full of people typing in stupid crap like "xDDDDD" every time they got the high score for camping or being generally annoying. Plenty of people going back and forth during those matches by slagging off one anoither like it's COD, all this while no one bothers to work as a team and that honestly pissed me off because it meant I died a lot since no one wants to look out for one another and the fact my team just act so stupid when it comes to taking objectives.

Battlefront isn't the only game I;ve had issues with when it came to other people, though most issues I;ve had with other players acting toxic or stupid has often been found in highly competitive games, shooters and even Mobas, at times MMO's as well. Funny part of all that is I;ve had very small encounters with highly toxic people when it came to co-op games or games that put focus on sandbox survival/co-op. I honestly don't think competitive gaming these days if at all is a healthy place to game in, the majority of my experiences from the past decade alone haven't been all that great, sure my co-op and local game experiences have been great but hardly the competitive side of gaming.

I too find myself being unable to play many matches of Battlefront and BF3-4 as much without getting bored to death or pissed because my team were just letting the other team win or only looking out for themselevs which is the complete opposite of teamwork, it's times like those described that make me want to go back to SP only games or ones that allow for co-op.

No, but I lost faith in gamer's over a decade ago.