My 2 cents:
1.IGA's games were becoming the Castlevania equivalent of Madden. Pretty much the same thing with some changes. Yes, I played em, I enjoyed some of them, but by the time OoE came out, I was sick to death of them. They were on their way to turning CV into the next Mega Man.
2.If you were alienated by LoS, it's because you chose to be and probably had your mind made up about it before you even played it. Are there things about it that I don't necessarily like? Sure. But LoS has a lot in common with the other 3D games in the series The climbing/shimmying was a big part of the 64 games; the combat has quite a bit in common with LoI, which came before God Of War. So a lot of the stuff people are crying about aren't necessarily additions from left field.
2.5 LoS was a reboot. If you thought it was going to be exactly like any of the other games, well....you were delusional. But that said, I wouldn't call LoS a risk. It's an excellent game, but it's not like they turned CV into an MMORPG. Now THAT'S a risk!
3.Cox is a loudmouth and needs to shut his cock-washer, focus on on the games, and stop tweeting when he gets drunk and belligerent.
4.Konami/MS SHOULDN'T listen to the community. The community doesn't know what it wants. If Konami made the games the community says it wanted, the only people who'd buy CV games would be the people on this forum. And the series really WOULD die. No offense to anyone here, but when I read the opinions of some of the folks on CV forums, it makes me wonder if some of you eat the same things every day.
5.You can still play the old games. They still exist. LoS coming out hasn't completely ripped them from existence. If you want to play nothing but 2D Castleroid games, you can do that and there's nothing anyone can do about it. It's even easier to do nowadays what with emulation.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I still can't figure out why people don't like the DMC reboot. As a fan of that series since the first game, I don't understand how people say it's "not a DMC game" just like the people who say LoS isn't a CV game. It looks, feels, and plays like DMC. Makes me wonder how much of the older DMC games some of the folks slagging it have actually played.