That's the beauty tho, an optional difficulty mode lets people pick and choose. For instance in GT5 which has the 3 fails and skip mode, I can choose to try again, or I can chose to move the story forward, it's my choice. This fixes massive difficulty spikes and smooths out other parts of the game. So you can have it either way. It doesn't in any way remove your choice to have the "pure" experience, or mine to get 95% of your experience out of the game.
I think I skipped one mission in GT5 (yoga) and about 5 in GTH2 (the cuba stealth missions that were broken). My brother played along side me and is not an experienced gamer, he would skip the parts that required constant fast aiming, but played the rest. It worked well for both of us.
As a note, Sony had an internal stat a while back, only 10% of people ever finish any game, only 30% make it past the first 3rd... This was for people who purchased the game. This wasn't an average across all titles, this was very consistent for most titles. This was measured with trophies. People fell off very obviously at each boss or challenge increase. If you're making an "Authorial experience" this type of gate keeping will keep most people from experiencing it that would have otherwise.
I think I skipped one mission in GT5 (yoga) and about 5 in GTH2 (the cuba stealth missions that were broken). My brother played along side me and is not an experienced gamer, he would skip the parts that required constant fast aiming, but played the rest. It worked well for both of us.
As a note, Sony had an internal stat a while back, only 10% of people ever finish any game, only 30% make it past the first 3rd... This was for people who purchased the game. This wasn't an average across all titles, this was very consistent for most titles. This was measured with trophies. People fell off very obviously at each boss or challenge increase. If you're making an "Authorial experience" this type of gate keeping will keep most people from experiencing it that would have otherwise.