I suppose it is a niche, for competitive gamers that either need mobility, or lack the space for a desktop. Personally I enjoy gaming, but a gaming laptop isn't for me, regardless of the price, because I need the laptop for work as well, and, with few exceptions (such as the Lenovo Legion), pure gaming laptops have a keyboard layout that isn't suitable for many work-related tasks (majority have small cursor keys, and/or no numpad and/or no dedicated keys for PAGE-UP/PAGE-DOWN/HOME/END). My kids like gaming too, but also need the laptop for studying, and, again, the keyboard layout isn't suitable, even if I could afford to buy them pure gaming laptops.
As for the screen size, while I agree with George that many laptops larger than 15" aren't really that mobile (with the exception of the Zephyrus, the remaining laptops mentioned in this article are all between 3.5 kg and 4 kg together with the power supply), gaming laptops seem to be following the trend of moving to 16:10 aspect ratio. I guess I can understand why (as a laptop manufacturer, you'd rather use the same screen aspect ratio for all models), but while the 16:10 aspect ratio is preferable for work, for many types of games (such as first-person and shooting games) it increases the overall screen size (making the laptop larger) without much benefit, because for these types of games you prefer wider field of view horizontally. So what was for example 15" in 16:9 would have to be 16" in 16:10, to compensate.
Hence the market for these devices, IMHO, is more portability than mobility. But I wouldn't say it is desktop replacement, because for me a defining characteristic of a desktop replacement is having as large screen as possible (as you are replacing all components of a desktop, including the screen, in a portable package). So in 16:10 I guess that would need to be 18".
Hype? Both yes and no. IMHO: it really depends on the use model.
Frankly as my eyes get older the desire or imagined need to view higher resolution content on various sized screens seems to dwindle.
Take the 55" TV sitting ~10' across the room from me. Can I really see the difference between 720P, 1080P and 4K? Does it really matter enough to encourage me to spend more on "premium content" vs lower resolution content?
While I've found that on a 13" screen sitting an arms reach from my eyes 1080P and lower resolution looks 'grainy' or at least less desirable than a 2-4K screen does and has influenced my laptop purchasing decisions for over a decade the question(s) I need to ask myself is do I need EVERYTHING to be presented at the higher resolution and at what cost?
Disclaimer: IMHO anything >15" is not all that "mobile" in the first place.
Given that many modern "gaming" laptops need to be tethered to an AC power outlet let alone may need a 'cooling pad' between it and anyone's actual 'lap' when gaming the 'package' (laptop&power brick) is surely more portable and takes up less space than a proper desktop and can be a real boon for mobile folks that also like to play modern AAA games.
While personally anything >14" is to large/heavy/bulky for me to lug around in the wild so they stay at home while my <= 13-14" devices get used.
A few years ago during the "mining" and "pandemic" years a gamer could get an entire 'fairly decent' laptop for the same or less cost of a top-of-the-line desktop GPU card.
With an HDMI, DP or TB port the user could fairly easily hook up whatever display device they wished.
So I guess that in the end the question is what exactly is the market for these devices?
With the above I'm assuming that everything but 'mobile' is mostly (+%75) "plugged in" to AC power mains while 'mobile' is +%75 running on battery power.
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