Yeah, a lot of it was about tastes and marketing.

Other parts are about manufacturing processes and costs.

There's no single thing.

To the original topic, there's no reason that you can't have a tactile feel shift lever, about a quarter of the size of current ones, up on the dashboard.

I have a Toyota Sienna that has a physical PRNDL lever on the dash. Replacing it with an electronic shift selector, provided it retained the tactile feel, would not be a huge problem.

But making it touch screen would suck.