When it comes to setting products they should be focused on hardcore fans and quality, that doesn't mean you don't have beginner and other products to appeal new fans/casuals, the setting books are where appealing to the hardcore fans is most important, because that buzz and excitement is what will draw the casuals to them. It's still not an all or nothing situation, but at minimum the settings have to be functional and not doing things to needlessly pissing off hardcore fans (like breaking up Ravenlofts Core was completely needless anatognising Ravenloft fans).
Y'know, I'm gonna dig into this. As a Warcraft fan, casual v hardcore is something that comes up a lot. And, due to Warcraft being, y'know, a video game, we got numbers!
Hardcore players barely make up 10% of the playerbase and that's in a good year. Turns out, no, designing the game for just those characters is not good as the current absolutely brutal series of guild crushing raids at the moment show. Said hardcore players also constantly complain about wanting Raid Finder, an accessible way for people who aren't no-lifing and try-harding, to be removed.... Despite the fact Blizz have gone on record saying that raids only exist because Raid Finder gives enough numbers to make it justifiable to even do raids.
So, due to this history, please forgive me whenever my view on folks saying "Just focus on the hardcores" I kind of am a bit skeptical. A lot skeptical, I'd argue,
I'd instead argue what WotC need to do is put more meat onto these barebones products they're releasing so as to inspire people to be more excited. Stuff like Kobold Press, or heck, even the setting books for Pathfinder, are certainly not developed for the hardcore in mind but instead remain accessible, and they're miles ahead of what WotC's doing
Also on Ravenloft, what do you actually get for keeping the Core? Because from what I see, you get an inability to easily slot in new things and being tied to a setting system that mashed together a bunch of seperate micro-settings that were designed to be played seperately in the first place. The Core may have been historic but it wasn't necessarily a good idea to even begin with