Games have largely moved away from direct connections and user hosted servers though. The players and companies prefer the modern match making system. Its easier to use, more reliable, and gives the company greater control over the experience.
How much of that is because of (CG)NAT though? You can still do matchmaking and have direct connections. Yeah, there are trade-offs, but when you look at for example the fighting game crowd where latency is a big deal, consumers may massively prefer it.
(Either way, a "gamer" branded product that is unlikely to actually help in most real gaming scenarios is 95% of "gamer" branded products.)
