You really are quite aggressive when you've got a point to make.
I fail to see any contradiction in my statements. Not making specific use of the void at the edge of the screen is not the same thing as leaving it blank. it can form part of the playfield but not be the focus of attention. It can form part of the background in games which already have a limited playfield (e.g. Easter Bonus, Tetris style games). The 4:3 background would just be the widescreen one, but cropped.
Info normally floating on the active playfield (players score, current level, energy bar, etc) can be moved into a bordered area at the side. Not the best solution, but if you really want to focus on a 4:3 area (e.g. vertical shooters), it is worth not just ignoring the available space. My irritability level is reduced because my screen is being used to the best potential for that type of game. Of course, a vertical shooter could have the option of rotating the screen 90 degrees, so that I could pivot my screen ;) That really is a luxury though, and not one I'd be annoyed at not being provided (not many people use their TFT in portrait orientation).
If there ISN'T a widescreen monitor, information can be shown succinctly, reduced in size, simplified... any number of ways to prevent the information becoming a distraction to gameplay. I've played games that already do this. Half Life 2 can show health information around the crosshairs. It's less precise than having a numeric representation, but it is useful. Tweaking HUD displays has been an option in games since Unreal 1 (ISTR you could define the size, opacity and level of info displayed). Probably there are earlier examples, but Unreal is just the one that I recall.
Perhaps leave it to the player to decide what they do and do not want to see. Though I concede that, for the casual gamer, keeping options to a minimum is the best course of action. You could match the desktop resolution and programmatically determine if frame rate would be acceptable. If not, halve the resolution either by pixel-doubling or literally setting a lower res (if fill rate is the issue), though this is difficult for widescreen displays because 960x600 and/or 840x525 are generally not defined modes. This really is an edge case though. I would assume (perhaps wrongly, I don't know) that anyone with a high-res widescreen display would likely not have a card so slow that pixel doubling e.g. 840x525 to 1680x1050 would be a problem. It's a 2D operation and graphics cards have long been so fast at 2D that they may as well be instantaneous.
If the target audience is running a P3-450 with an S3 Virge card or some awful shared-RAM chipset (Intel, I'm looking at you) then OK, you have me bang to rights. Anything above 640x480 is going to be a challenge there. Anything 3D will die framerate death even then. trying to add widescreen support to a game that runs fine on such old hardware would be like adding fine gold filigree to a plastic ring from a Christmas cracker! ;)
I fail to see any contradiction in my statements. Not making specific use of the void at the edge of the screen is not the same thing as leaving it blank. it can form part of the playfield but not be the focus of attention. It can form part of the background in games which already have a limited playfield (e.g. Easter Bonus, Tetris style games). The 4:3 background would just be the widescreen one, but cropped.
Info normally floating on the active playfield (players score, current level, energy bar, etc) can be moved into a bordered area at the side. Not the best solution, but if you really want to focus on a 4:3 area (e.g. vertical shooters), it is worth not just ignoring the available space. My irritability level is reduced because my screen is being used to the best potential for that type of game. Of course, a vertical shooter could have the option of rotating the screen 90 degrees, so that I could pivot my screen ;) That really is a luxury though, and not one I'd be annoyed at not being provided (not many people use their TFT in portrait orientation).
If there ISN'T a widescreen monitor, information can be shown succinctly, reduced in size, simplified... any number of ways to prevent the information becoming a distraction to gameplay. I've played games that already do this. Half Life 2 can show health information around the crosshairs. It's less precise than having a numeric representation, but it is useful. Tweaking HUD displays has been an option in games since Unreal 1 (ISTR you could define the size, opacity and level of info displayed). Probably there are earlier examples, but Unreal is just the one that I recall.
Perhaps leave it to the player to decide what they do and do not want to see. Though I concede that, for the casual gamer, keeping options to a minimum is the best course of action. You could match the desktop resolution and programmatically determine if frame rate would be acceptable. If not, halve the resolution either by pixel-doubling or literally setting a lower res (if fill rate is the issue), though this is difficult for widescreen displays because 960x600 and/or 840x525 are generally not defined modes. This really is an edge case though. I would assume (perhaps wrongly, I don't know) that anyone with a high-res widescreen display would likely not have a card so slow that pixel doubling e.g. 840x525 to 1680x1050 would be a problem. It's a 2D operation and graphics cards have long been so fast at 2D that they may as well be instantaneous.
If the target audience is running a P3-450 with an S3 Virge card or some awful shared-RAM chipset (Intel, I'm looking at you) then OK, you have me bang to rights. Anything above 640x480 is going to be a challenge there. Anything 3D will die framerate death even then. trying to add widescreen support to a game that runs fine on such old hardware would be like adding fine gold filigree to a plastic ring from a Christmas cracker! ;)