Sacrosanct
Legend
Obviously people will get offended over different things, and my post was a bit tongue in cheek. However, I'm seeing some serious flaws in arguments here. Even if you ignore the "someone criticizing my favorite thing means they are insulting me personally" thing, which I disagree with, there seems to be an assumption or inference that if you criticize anything, then you're a hater of that thing. That simply isn't true. It's absolutely fair for someone to not like how warlords could heal wounds in 4e, but that doesn't mean they hate 4e. That's just a small part of 4e. There are a lot of other things people could like about the system, like it's organization, minions, balance, and tactical combat.We can come back to this when people say THACO was inferior because it was about hitting better by literally being worse at hitting things or something.
It's also flawed to think the 5e designers forsake 4e completely. That's simply objectively not true based on the number of things in 5e that are clearly inspired by 4e (like at-wills, non-magical healing, etc.). It certainly doesn't seem like 5e gave every other edition more love. Like 1e for example. There's little if anything in 5e that came from AD&D. I suspect attitudes like that are similar to privilege. I.e., "I was used to be the main thing and majority, anything less than me being the majority now means I'm being punished compared to everyone else." If you're used to getting 3/4 of the pie, and now get an equal share, that doesn't mean you're being punished or singled out. I strongly suspect that if ONE D&D wasn't trying to be backwards compatible, we'd hear the same complaints from 5e fans, and how the new system is an insult to all of them. It happens with every major edition change.
I really wish people would avoid trying to rehash edition wars here. We all have favorite editions. Editions that others don't like. They're free to criticize them. If I'm (general me) asking people to not make assumptions about how I feel about a game, then I most certainly shouldn't make assumptions about someone's motivations or beliefs if they don't like the same things I do. I like B/X and AD&D and early 5e. Others don't. No big deal. I don't like the system mastery of 3e or the overwhelming number of PC options of late 5e. Others love it. More power to them; glad they are having fun. The only thing that matters to me is that whatever brings the most people to the hobby I will support, regardless of my personal tastes, because a rising tide rises all ships.
To bring this around to the OP, the answer is yes. Because everyone likes different things. We've seen the success of OSE and Shadowdark as examples. There absolutely is room for an OSR style of play in the current market and to bring new players in. That doesn't mean (and I never implied) that it should be the biggest style of getting people into gaming. That clearly doesn't seem realistic. But there is room.