yes 4C is mainstream in respect to high end gaming which makes up a small amount of total PC and laptop sales. As for the irrelevance, it may be to you but Nvidia were speaking about some streaming (CITRIX) type gaming tech too allow a lot more PCs to game (if it works of course) so its not as irrelevant as you might suggest.
Gaming is about graphics cards and monitors mostly. I have an original i7 which I could not give away now and it is fine with Bf4, Dirt Rally etc.
OK, although I'm not sure what your original point was exactly. I don't think anyone suggested 4K or 6C/8C CPUs were mainstream, even within the subset of the gaming community. I was mostly referring to your statement about 4C not being mainstream... it actually is far more so than you probably think; Sandy Bridge had 4C after all, so it's hardly a new thing. Plus, looking at the cost of the Kaby dual core offering, it's obscenely overpriced and almost a suggestion Intel are pushing people towards quad.
My point is simply that saying 4C is not mainstream is only half a statement in absence of answering "who to"? For gamers? YES it is... a poll would find most gamers already have one given they've been available so long, and for gaming there's a big improvement over 2C in most titles, so it's clearly where you need to be as a gamer. For professional users? Largely NO, but only because many of them will be on 6C/8C, but 4C would certainly be the bare minimum. For your average PC/laptop user who surfs the net, uses MS Word and doesn't care about games... absolutely NO, and they most likely don't even know what a CPU core is lol! The latter group comprises the vast majority of the global PC owning population, so in that respect all gaming and professional use is niche in comparison, and therefore by definition so are 4C+ CPUs. But so what? This fact has little to no relevance to what Intel or AMD are doing with Kaby and Ryzen at the top end, and technology will still march on regardless... and that should benefit everyone of course.
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WTF?