I respect your well thought out reasoning supporting trophies/achievements. But to me, they seem out-of-place and counter-intuitive to what gaming is about, having fun.
I was playing Tekken Tag Tournament HD with a friend recently and he was not used to an era where trophies did not exist. I noticed something interesting, he wanted to chase all the trophies in the game, doing mundane and I believe pointless task that the original game on the PS2 never intended, such as try to win 50 survival matches, win a match in a certain way, or adding more "work" to the game than there needs to be. Now everyone can spend their time doing what they like, but when it's not about having fun, discovering new abilities/strategies/mechanics on your own but just chasing a set of goals that probably was not even intended by the original designers, I think that is where achievements become a liability and problem.
As a person who grew up playing games before there was an emphasis on instant gratification such as : games playing themselves, gps direction, achievements, and general handholding, I just see more problems with achievements than benefits.
I also play WOW and have seen how achievements can turn a community toward elitism and doing mindless activities just to increase their "online" cred. You cannot join a competitive raid or PVP team without providing an achievement. I have seen people just flying around the world map collecting every lore/location to unlock an achievement, which I think they use to validate their character? It just seems like a very easy way to add "work" with very little actual game mechanic/design involved.
The problem with cheevos/trophies isn't the concept, it's the execution.
Most of the time they're just an afterthought that broadly goes into two categories : pointless, and tiresome.
Either it's a cheevo you'll unlock during normal play (such as "completing chapter 4", or "killing 100 zombies" in a game where you'll need to kill 500 to complete the game), or it's not and there's a fair chance it'll require grinding ("killing 1000 zombies" in a game where you'll need to kill 500 to complete the game).
That being said, "tutorial" achievements are a neat way to present some otherwise not-so-easily discovered aspects of a game. You could argue that it's a GD failure if you need a meta-system to tell you what you can do, but it can also be seen as an optional way to discover advanced tricks for those who look for them while keeping the vanilla experience much simpler/streamlined.
Yet, as much as I like cheevos, I do not mind them being absent from Nintendo consoles. Not one bit. They are often badly designed and there's no way you can know that beforehand, which tends to lead to not checking them at all to prevent spoilers/disappointment, which kinda defeats their purpose in the first place ...
Edit :
They were a fun novelty.
In 2009.
I'd disagree on the date, but wholeheartedly agree on the feeling.
When I discovered them in PS2's Star Ocean 3, I thought it was a nice a concept.
Now it feels mandatory. I mean, it IS mandatory on some platforms. But it actually
feels forced.
And to those saying "just ignore it!", well, what a better way to describe a GD failure than "don't play it!"
