When games are made that are designed for hundreds of hours of play, there will certainly be winners and losers. You don't need to wait to see the impact of this, look around right now.
Sure. There's very little upside and a whole lot of risk in making $60 single player games now. Most games will be built with service models over the next few years in order to increase the opportunity. If a balance can be found there, single player games would be in a much better place.
They would have sold even more.
All about context though. This year is down in hardware partially because Nov 2015 was absolutely gigantic. Still selling more than in Nov 2014. 3DS is up vs YA.
There just wasn't the content this November to push lots of HW. Gotta remember the best seller of hardware is market moving software. With the top 3 down YoY, that will have an impact on HW.
Your concern should be more focused on software release count and the homogenization of big games that can drive HW.
Smaller release counts make every game released more important.
For my own personal gaming tastes, I can get behind this. In the rush to attract the "core" I think a lot of games are trying to have systems in order to cover being an action game with RPG elements, stealth mechanics and crafting systems. Personally, I'd like to see more games like DOOM. Pick what you are, and be really good at that one thing.