It is a tiny minority on both sides of the argument, the majority of people who buy games do not spend time on forums, they just want them to run and don't give a hoot about what tech has been used to do the visuals.
As to locking in tech this has failed badly with RTX and NVidia, AMD have definitely decided the tech has a future hence their latest 6 series cards have started to use it.
If a tech is really worthwhile to a manufacturer they will find a way to implement it even if their rivals try and lock it in to their systems.
Both NVidia and AMD think Ray Tracing is worth doing (they are the ones with the market research numbers), this is something I can't argue with.
For the record I am not a fan of RT but I do know plenty of people on these forums are.