They are though.
Like I said, this is a standard practice in the webgames space, in the PC space and in the mobile space, and has been making EA big money in the console space with FIFA FUT for just shy of a decade now.
Its only now that "real" games are seeing it introduced that the "real gamer" vocal minority are deciding its a big deal because its now in "their" games.
I think it's more that they've appeared in several of the biggest console games of the year that have a £50 entry fee, all in one season, following their success in Overwatch. It feels like a very sudden industry-wide move in the biggest games in the console space, as opposed to the relatively gradual adoption of random paid microtransactions elsewhere.
Lootboxes have been around for ages but the reason it's a talking point now isnt only its appearance on consoles, it's that it's suddenly the business model of the most successful, huge and paid £50 AAA games that would be successful whether or not they had it, and so the defence of them as 'rising costs of games development!' becomes laughable in the face of the juggernaut franchises that are the console games to choose to deploy them.
You're also assuming that people objecting to them are 'console gamers' utterly oblivious to PC and mobile gaming, and that they haven't objected to various business models over the years either. I was objecting to predatory ftp mobile games years ago, I don't see how it's suddenly removing the blinkers, hypocrisy or a change of pace to object to the same crap in games that have a £50 starter fee just because they are on a different device, it feels like an evolution of the same argument to me. Not all 'console gamers' are oblivious to other sectors, there's been plenty of discussion about similar stuff in mobile games here over the years.