I would imagine they will have a niche market. I doubt they will ever seriously take off. The company that supports this kind of product would need to be willing to understand that they do not have the "next generation of gaming" in their hands. If they know that they would most likely succeed in specifically oriented markets (i.e. Relgious games for Sunday School, Elementry games for younger children, Developmental games for physically challenged) I think you will see these pop up. They need to stay within the model of the business as the consumer, not the everyday xbox 360 gamer. If they attempt to stray outside of this market I feel they will fail.
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From what I can tell, they sort of already have. Older folks and businesses are getting involved and the market seems to be experiencing a boom. Whether it will ever really go main-mainstream, that is up to the gods.
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Deliberately educational games have been around as long as personal computers. There is no reason to believe that they will ever "take off". There are at least two reasons to think that they won't. First, they invariably take themselves too seriously and lose much of the "fun factor". Second, they will always be very low budget compared to the games from entertainment companies and compare unfavorably because of that. However, relatively educational games have always held a niche of the games market. Consider Sim City, Capitalism, and all the better Tycoon type games. Even war games usually teach history and geography. But whenever even the Sim people tried to get too serious, such as with their Public Health policy game (I forget the name) they had a flop on their hands.
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It might take a while, but I think so.

The stigma is that video games are considered trivial and "twitchy" entertainment by the general public. People who grew up playing Pac Man and Space Invaders tend to remember video games as trivial little distractions, while others that have been a little more thoughtful in analyzing the evolution of video games truly see it as a new, immersive form of entertainment. So eventually, I think video games may someday be perceived as a meaningful "not trivial" form of entertainment and serious games will take off. Meanwhile it might be a good idea for game developers to shed the stereotypes that they get placed on them and start acting a bit more serious in their story telling. :)
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They can, and given decades I think they will.

But I don't think a truly good one has been created yet. People play games to get entertained, not to learn. Sudoku and crosswords are somewhat educational, and they blew up because they are also entertaining. There is no analogous video game.
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Yes, eventually games will gain more widespread acceptance into society and not viewed as a toy anymore.

Games will become more commonplace and they will be used in schools as learning tools to replace books so that the learning experience can be more interactive.
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I really don't think so. They resist the term "edutainment", although many parents like to buy edutainment games for their kids. Their niche market right now is the military and medicine, which is fine and doubtless makes learning highly defined skills easier and perhaps more enjoyable, although these "games" seem to also resist being fun as not part of their definition and goal.

I have many friends who are both highly educated and interested in many games. And never once has one of them even suggested playing a game that falls into the category of a "serious game", as defined by founder Jimmy Wales. I'd say if people who play unusual games and are intelligent and educated aren't flocking to serious games, then it's not going to happen unless the definition is broadened a bit.
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