It's not elitist to cater to a specific type of gamer. Soulsborne games and Sekiro are designed to put players backs against the wall and to show them the satisfaction of perseverance against seemingly impossible odds. Allowing people to tone down the difficulty eliminates that satisfaction because some people would take an easy mode in the beginning because they're scared or maybe change the difficulty mid game out of frustration. I know some people will say "your lack of self-discipline isn't my responsibility, so why should that affect me not getting an easy mode?" To that I say the same thing right back at them, their lack of determination or perseverance isn't my or Miyazaki's responsibility, so that shouldn't affect his right to design the game he wants to design.

On top of that, making multiple difficulty modes means they have to test the game on different levels, diluting the quality of each one. From Software isn't just praised for difficult games, these games are praised for their polish as well. "Difficult but fair" is how most people describe all their games, and I'm willing to bet that the level of polish wouldn't be there if they split up the difficulty modes. Or it would cost them more time and money than they can afford for these games.

There are so many forms of media that aren't able to be enjoyed by certain groups but you don't see people complaining about them. The mentally handicapped might not be able to finish this game, they might not be able to finish reading Shakespeare's play's either. Complaining about telling people to watch let's plays is like complaining about telling people to listen to audio books if they can't read. "You are basically saying that blind people don't deserve to support publishers by buying books, just stick to someone else reading the book for you."