Wofano Wotanto
Hero
Hex-and-counter wargames are far from dead, although their audience has shrunken from the 70s and 80s and modern designs are quite a bit more innovative and offer more replay value - as well as being far more expensive and having much better component quality. Many of them even commit the heresy of using area movement instead of hexes.Not completely, but I suspect over time computer wargames, especially multiplayer ones have eaten their lunch. They only really had a brief strong period anyway; the fall of SPI was kind of the beginning of the end for them.

That said, unless you're already a historical gamer it's entirely possible to spend decades without being aware of that whole corner of the hobby, as they're not generally interested in proselytizing outside of their sub-community and most stores carry few if any of the games, even the newest releases. That's a general issue with historical gamers in general, at least in the US - the minis guys are no better than the board gamers about it - but a trip to Historicon, Fall In or Cold Wars will show that there's a pretty active community out there to this day. They seem to sustain their numbers okay through recruiting their own kids and from general history buffs, with college/grad school kids making up a fair percentage of their numbers. They've always skewed older than roleplayers and card gamers IME, but the current crop isn't any older on average than they've always been.
I'm told Europe and particularly the UK are a lot better about integrating their historical and non-historical gamers, but that's just anecdotal.