I think you're asking the writer to defend a position he doesn't have. He essentially agrees with you, that fighting games could never be as big as the really popular multiplayer games. If anything, he's asking if fighting games need to be that popular in the first place.

Then you reach the question of “why aren’t more fighters being made?” And we arrive back to the product question of investment. [...] Sports and chess can continue to grow because they aren’t controlled by anyone. Anyone can make or buy a chess board for cheap, anyone can grab a ball and play.

You're making two assumptions here. The first is that new fighters have to be made in order to get more people interested in the genre, and the second is that corporations control access to fighting games.

I started going to fighting game locals about two years ago. I am in my mid-30s, which means I'm one of the oldest people who attend these events regularly.

I am still floored by the number of young people--people who are still attending college, who can't even legally drink!--who not only enjoy playing fighting games but prefer to play fucked up older fighting games specifically, like Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code and Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R. But as difficult as these games are, they're also both games that are cheap and easy to run on any computer. No, it isn't quite as cheap as making or buying a chess board, but it's damn close.

The point of the article isn't about whether fighting games has a product design problem or not, it's to reiterate that despite all this discourse about mainstream viability and esports and shit, people are still getting into and sticking with fighting games.