[rant]
It is very interesting to see people think of chiptunes as a genre. It's more of an instrument choice, or subset of instruments. It's like "strings" or "percussion" as a term, not a genre, as you can have chiptunes that are metal, classical, VGM, funk, prog, whatever.
The whole discussion of "limiting yourself" with chiptunes can be as easily applied to any other genre, if it's gonna be lumped in with them. With metal, you're adhering to a specific sound and won't really stray from it, unless you are willing to be accused of not making a song that's 100% metal, and this could be true of other genres. As for the instrument part and it being "lo-fi," I'd say you have to judge it within its own standards. For example, if you have a song that's entirely a piano piece, the author is probably limiting themselves to something that can be played with two hands by a single person, and no other instruments cuts down on what they can do as well. If a piano song sounds just like a piano in real life, it's "quality," but if a chiptune sounds like something an actual 8-bit machine could spit out, it's "total lack of production," "terrible sound quality," and "limiting creativity."
Yeah I know this isn't gonna change anything, and I've probably wasted my time, but I'm sick of the close-mindedness here that's just the de facto standard.
[/rant]
tl;dr: meh