No, that's not objectification.
You seem to mistake "object" as in "physical thing without life" and the original use of the term, in Grammar.
Alex finds Jessie
"Alex" is the subject and "Jessie" is the object.
Sexual objectification is the sense of women being the objects in a sexual sense.
"David is dating Sarah"
David is the subject, Sarah is the object, the verb phrase is to do with sexual relations.
There can also be violent objectification.
"Captain Price shoots the platoon of Russian Soldier"
Price is the subject, russian platoon is the object, violence is the verb phrase.
Objectification CANNOT be at work when the playable character is a woman, they are de-facto the subject, everything is through their perspective.
The term "sexual objectification" has been carried over whole from film criticism and applied to games with no understanding of what it actually means.
The problem is in fact sexual SUBJECTIVITY, because where the player character is female then they are the subject and the player is identifying with them in sexual preference. It's not that they don't like the idea of a woman being in love with a man...
... it's that they are imagining they are that woman.
How can we damn this as regressive, that men are wholley considering themselves in the role of a woman. They are not passive observers, they are living this avatar.
This is why where there is romance it is in RPGs where you pick the player-character's gender and pick what relationships they are in.
As to marketing:
Were women excluded from the cover art of Last of Us and Bioshock Infinite "just beceause they were women"... or because they weren't the action hero protagonists? The devil is in the detail, of their reaction to various cover arts.
Because these are action games, they need to market themselves as such.
In which case the problem is with the developers for AGAIN choosing a male lead. I get it once or twice, but of all the new action heroes that have been created new in gaming since Tomb Raider... what proportion of them have been women?
Naughty Dog wasn't pressured to have a male lead, that was ther decision. Nor was Irrational Games coerced to have a male lead.
It's not sexism to chose any particular gender, no single act changed this... the problem is the trend.
I don't know what retard publisher categorically forbade a female lead but knowing publishers they are retards. Seriously, they are idiots of the games industry. Their expertise is fiddling numbers on stock markets and hedge funds, they suddenly think they know how to make video games.
They don't represent the industry.
They represent a nasty corporate minority who are only in it for the money, don't understand what they are dealing with, and want size of profits above all else and are ham fisted idiots about achieving it.