they are not judging it exactly, just giving their opinion based on what sony talked about. just assumptions and speculations.They can't judge the whole RT features or capapbilities of the console based on just a line from a company. Maybe EA talked about RT shadows only because they are targetting 60 FPS again in their games even for enxt-gen so they have to cut some features (or maybe there is a graphical mode for SP enabling all features or a 1400p 60 FPS mode with full RT). Like you said, First parties will try to include most of the features to showcase the console RT capabilities twhile sticking to 30 FPS again.
Richard just said that hes spoken to Cerny and in their talks, Cerny has talked more about efficiency than brute power. which is why he thinks there wont be a tflops war.