I agree with you. But the problem I see with HiRes is that racionalists don't know if everything above say 96/24 is snake oil or not.
Everything, particularly in audio, has diminishing returns. Yes, there is a line somewhere as to how high sampling needs to go to be “good enough”. But, different folks may have different views of where that line ought to be. For most, RBCD is good enough, but not for others. And, of course, some irrationally go to ridiculous extremes of ultra, ultra high sampling rates just because they assume “higher is always better”.
But, if I look at the recording side, a fair number of engineering teams have adopted 96k or 192k with 24-bit depth as their native recording format. That is even for releases intended solely for CD distribution. Yet, there are no big letters on the cover proclaiming it was a hirez recording. So, it does not appear to be a marketing thing, but possibly hirez re-releases are planned for sometime in the future from the archives. Still, I think they record in hirez because they believe from their experience and testing that hirez does a somewhat better job sonically. No one has a gun to their heads, and the hurdle of revamping recording equipment up/down the chain for hirez is not insignificant in cost. So, it is not a trivial decision, and it requires proper due diligence.
Let’s also not overlook the usefulness of 24-bits and its cumulative, but maybe only slight, effective improvement in headroom in the many serial stages of the recording chain, even if the final product is downrezzed to 16-bits.
Personally, I prefer playback at the original, native recorded resolution wherever possible. Even if that makes no audible difference vs. downrezzing, it also does not hurt on playback at all. It might even improve playback, however slightly, but it is not going to degrade it. I do not honor that with DSD playback, however, since EQ and other DSP features are much more important to me than native DSD.