@Veelk
Yeah, the sexualized J-Pop aesthetic probably turned many away, but you have to imagine Kamiya was aware of that risk when he designed it, especially after his success with old Dante (whom everyone thinks is cool). Maybe it was a conscious decision to only appeal to a specialized audience. It's a damn shame that so many wrote off something so good just for how it looked, but hey we're all guilty of it to some degree.
Also sure, in GoW, my noob friends used PoP more than anything else. But they also felt comfortable enough experimenting with other moves within a very short timeframe, something I unfortunately didn't see during their Bayo playthroughs. And while you might be onto something with that last point, I think most players, especially newer ones, decide well before within the first hour of playtime whether or not they want to continue playing. If Platinum wanted to appeal to a bigger crowd (which I honestly doubt), they probably would have been paced Bayo to meet this timeframe better.
I feel we're talking about this in two different frameworks. You seem to be looking at it from a marketting perspective, of trying to appeal to many as possible for the sake of appealing to as many as possible, for sales, etc. That's not what I see as accessibility.
If there is anything to be learned about Kamiya's persona from interviews and his twitter persona that I've seen is that he clearly doesn't give a shit about sales in relation to his games. He's interested in making a great game, regardless of what mainstream crowds think. Of course, he
works with people who won't okay a project unless they believe it has the potential to sell, of course, and it would be inaccurate to say that he is indifferent to his fans, as he is openly receptive to their opinions (though not their trolling). However, he is utterly indifferent to the fact that, say, Wonderful 101 bombed as if it were atomic, or that other games he made didn't sell over a million, or that he won't get to work on Dante again. Kamiya is happy with how W101 turned out simply because he accomplished with it what he wanted to do. He's an artist through and through, and that means he's enjoys the work of creating a game itself. That means he's happy if he makes a
great game, not a popular one. As such, he didn't see Bayonetta's aesthetics as a risk, he saw them as "Okay, I want to do this now and make it as great as possible." and if other players were intrigued or repelled by his vision, that was their business and made no difference to him. Of course, I don't know the guy, but I've never seen an interview or tweet that indicated anything otherwise.
Now, if he wanted to make Bayonetta more appealing in the sense you're describing, in terms of purely trying to get the largest crowd possible, he probably would have made different design decisions, I agree with that much, but as far as I can tell, that's never been the game he wanted to make. However, appeal is different from accessibility. To appeal to specifically set out to entice, compel them with promises desires fulfilled. Platinum games don't do quite that. They fulfill their own desires, and then share it with everyone. I feel it's the difference between a marketting campaign, and a party invitation. Marketing campaigns depend on you coming to be succcessful. Parties can be large or small, but they are fun regardless. You can go to one or not, but they'll enjoy themselves whatever you do. Marketting campaigns want you to have fun, parties have their own fun.
So while I do agree that gamers are fickle and GoW is more appealing to general audiences, I disagree with the notion that means it's accessible. Again, the fact that players aren't willing to work with the mechanics does not indicate that there are unreasonable barriers to working with those mechanics.