I don't think you're understanding him for some reason, or maybe I'm not understanding you. But it sounds like POE only allows certain classes based on gender, Elim is not saying which gender and class, but for instance if I cannot play a female magic user combo, I might not enjoy the game as much. If I'm stuck only using a male magic user, it kind of sucks, because my prefered player is the female sorcerer/wizard/etc. It won't prevent me from playing the game completely as I'm not completely stuck to one specific gender and class, but I can understand why some might be. And for me it has nothing to do with the avatar, and everything to do with the type of lore and world I want to create for myself in most rpgs and mmos. But in this I'm speaking of mmos and rpgs, where you pretty much can customize the character to your hearts content.
Games like Zelda are a different story, as you don't have as much control over the player's lore. I can understand the desire to have a female lead in these games, but I don't see why people would suddenly boycott the game for it not having a female lead, especially if they've played the games in the past. So you were perfectly ok with male link for the last X amount of games, but suddenly you're going to boycott the game because they're keeping to the same lore (directed at the boycotters)? I also don't think it should be criticized for the extent it has. Criticism is fine, but people are acting like this is the most regressive thing in the world and that it just shows how game developers and gamers are out of touch with the current year. And finally in regards to the reply that was made by the Nintendo person, perhaps they weren't prepared for the question so the answer was not thought out very well and perhaps it was answered by someone who doesn't have English as their first language, so the words chosen did not convey things in the right manner. But even for that I don't think people should get as upset as they have over it.