Financially it makes more sense to target everyone and not whales. Whales are nice but game whales are not casino whales that spend $10k a night or $500k a night. Whale territory could mean $5k for that entire player's history with that single game. $5k isn't a lot over 3 years in the grand scheme. Game whales are more like cherries to put on top of that delicious cupcake.
Think it is important right now to delineate discussion of F2P games retail+lootbox. Since you responded to Gotchaye's post that specifically mentioned F2P games:
https://venturebeat.com/2016/03/23/...venue-comes-from-only-0-19-of-players-report/
The economy is pretty much still whale-centric. Unrelated to the article encouraging light spending anecdotally does seem to combat churn to a non-insignificant degree just because of attachment/brand loyalty to a game, but it's still quite a different precedent overall numbers game from the premise of a $60 game with lootboxes, since users who bought a game retail are already more likely to spend on gaming to begin with.