That's unfortunate, if it's true. I haven't been following Yamaha's all that closely in the past couple of years, but I was quite happy with the EQ job that my RX-V2500 did back in the day. My recollection of Yamaha Aventage reviews in the past is that they were not unhappy with the YPAO, but maybe I have to look them over again. If you have some references, I would be interested to review them.
The newest Denons have Audyssey MultEQ XT (e.g. AVR-X3100W) and the upcoming AVR-X4100W (the Atmos-equipped model that was just announced) will have Audyssey MultEQ XT32, but the Onkyo/Integra products are dropping Audyssey in favor of their in-house effort, and Pioneer and Marantz really don't show up on my radar screen in this category.
Denon has historically had what I consider to be the worst possible interface that I have ever seen on an AV receiver, and that includes my first Yamaha which had no GUI at all, and everything had to be done from the receiver's display. My first experience was with a 2310CI and then I foolishly bought a 3312CI, thinking that they couldn't possibly have kept the same approach (they did, just dressed up a little to bring it out of the B&W TRS-80 motif). There is a reference guide from Batpig on AVS Forums that attempts to translate Denon's approach into common sense. (The need for which is a clear indication of the problem.) I will not buy another Denon until someone provides evidence that they have come out of the usability dark ages.
The advent of Atmos will certainly bring Room EQ and DSP Processing into the forefront more than ever. It will be interesting to see which manufacturers actually deliver on their timeframes, which figure out how to do it right, and how fast they react to fixing the inevitable problems that will arise.