The 60 fps target is, always has been and always will be a design decision. It goes without saying you don't get to have all the bells and whistles, native 4k, raytracing etc and still expect 60 fps on consoles, but that isn't necessary either. Sony's first party games have shown that it's perfectly possible to have stunning, current-gen looking games and still reach that performance target, at least so far. That should be the expectation.
FFXVI clearly falls short. It is a beautiful looking game, but it isn't up there with the best looking games on the system. The fact that it drops below the VRR threshold at 1080p is really poor, there's no way around that. Other games manage to look better, have higher image quality and run better, all at the same time. This one is 100% on the dev team.