What is design philosophy behind "pointer" style menus?

I'm thinking the floating reticle used to select menu optiona, I believe popularized by Destiny. What is the point of these? It just seems so much clumsier than having d-pad navigation, at least for consoles.

Even if it is an ease of porting to PC thing, I can't imagine creating mouse specific UI elements to be a huge lift. So why has this style become so popular?