The problem is that this was a sentiment parroted by even Digital Foundry themselves over a year ago:
They seem(ed?) to think that we're back in the days of exotic PS2 / PS3 hardware which needed a lot of expertise and trickery to really maximize the hardware. We are in different times now where development is easier than ever due to better tools, lower level hardware access and more predictable performance from what amounts to custom PC parts in a box. There isn't much mythical untapped potential left on the table.
They also said this with a straight face when so many games already relied on reconstruction techniques (and continue to rely on them even on the Pro) just to perform adequately. The difference with Pro is that PSSR actually provides a very good solution to the issue which requires new hardware.
Can't compare a Oct 24' comment with a March 23' one, back then, as crazy as it sound, we still were in the cross gen era, differences between fidelity and performance modes were small, you can check in many of these games, the internal resolution was higher and since it was just about upgraded old gen versions, sure, games looked worse overall, but image quality was much cleaner.
Problems started last 12 months specially, with next-gen games and UE5 ones, lower resolution even in fidelity modes, lots of artifacts, flickering, shimmering.. and the performance modes suffering a lot, in many cases with a very dirty image quality, in many others not reaching solid 60 FPS
Also agree with them when they said no upcoming tech from AMD was looking that good to make the Pro really worth, but it's Playstation's upscaler what's moving the needle, which now AMD might have or not, we'll see, but it definitely wasn't known back then.