I think it is. Latency was just one of the problems he described. A physical controller sometimes adds "phantom inputs" as the joystick transitions between two inputs. Physical actuators also slow down with wear. A physical Atari-playing robot needs to learn qualitatively different strategies that are somewhat more robust to these problems. Emulators also let the bot take as much time as it needs between frames, which is much easier than playing in real time. To me, all of this makes a physical robot seem like a decent way to start engaging with problems that come up in robotics but not simulated games.