I kind of agree, they are charging for an extra sound benefit most people won't be able to distinguish. Personally I always mixdown to 24/48Khz until the final mixdown for CD. Having FLAC, APE and other hi-res formats opens more potential. Record companies are charging some based on hype, placebos and unwarranted claims.
Despite what others say, DSD to me sounds pretty good although again the source material has be sampled at output rate (through analogue conversion) rather than upsampled to fill all of the 1&0's.
I will buy SACD player which will also act as a high-end CD player at some point.
I think this discussion depends to a major extent on which side of the table you're coming from.
Purely as a customer, I'm inclined to believe that,
IF THERE IS A DIFFERENCE, the higher resolution version will be better. Assuming the company selling the product isn't "playing games", if they're offering a 24/192k version and a 16/44k version, they will have created the master at 24/192k first, then down-sampled it to create the 16/44k version. So,
IF the conversion process is audible, then the 24/192k version will be closer to the master and, if the conversion really is totally inaudible, then they will be equal. Likewise,
IF the company has deliberately chosen to make the two versions sound different, they will be most likely to have deliberately reduced the quality on the 16/44k version. (Either to deliberately ensure that their more expensive "premium" version sounds better, or to deliberately reduce the details audible in the "non-audiophile" version because they believe that's what their audience expects.) All of these factors led me to believe that the 24/192k version will be either audibly the same as, or audibly better than, the 16/44k version. And so, by buying the 24/192k version, I can be most sure of getting the best version (or, at the very least, not a deliberately or accidentally reduced version).
I do
NOT find the various claims about how high-resolution and better frequency response can actually have a
negative effect on sound quality to be at all credible with modern equipment.
Now, as a seller of music, I think the current reality is simply that high-resolution is an excellent marketing strategy. If my customers are willing to buy a "24/192k remaster" just because it's 24/192k, or if they're willing to pay a few dollars more for it than the "regular" version, then that's all the motivation I require to offer it for sale. There's no motivation for me to perform testing to prove that it's better, and certainly no motivation for me to do testing that might prove the opposite; and, obviously, even a test result that proved that the high-res version was "a tiny bit better, but most people don't notice the difference" would be bad for business.
And, finally, as a seller of audio
equipment, I can use the fact that my products support the higher sample rate as a positive selling point, and as a reason why my customers should upgrade their older equipment to "current high-res products". (And, if anything, I might have more motivation to do so, since, presumably, people will buy music either way, but they may not choose to upgrade hardware without a "solid reason".) However, the reality is that
MOST current DACs support sample rates up to and including 24/192k so, while it might be considered to be an important feature, it's hardly a "product differentiator".
My overall conclusion would be that "enough people want high-resolution music" that it makes sense to both produce and to sell it... and that technical "proof positive" that the difference is audible is pretty much unnecessary at this point. It simply seems unlikely whether a scientific study that provides conclusive proof either way will have much effect on sales - and it is sales that "drive the need to produce the product". (You can make your own judgement as to whether "there's simply no point in fighting the amount of advertising money that's been spent to sell high-res to the public" or "the horse is already out of the barn and it's way too late to try and get him back inside - or to worry about how he escaped".) Bear in mind that storage space has gotten very cheap, which means that 24/192k files don't cost much more to store or download than 16/44k ones. And also remember that, as downloads have overtaken CDs as the most popular medium, and download bandwidth has also gotten cheaper, the fact that 16/44k is "the CD standard" has become less significant (more people are buying downloads than CDs, and the cost of downloading a 24/192k album is not significantly more than the cost of downloading a 16/44k album).
Also, as you've noted, simply offering a few more formats, and so more options, also tends to be good for business.