It seems as though I've heard this statement before.... 😉
Yes- I'm sure you have. I have too.
What's been keeping tubes alive is how they make distortion. If you were to put the solid state amps on the bench that have been lauded for 'tubelike sound' and measure their distortion characteristics, you'd find that their distortion looks different from actual tube amps. That means that they might be 'tube-like' which is not the same as saying they actually sound just like a tube amp (sorry for the Santos-ism). IOW they sound like tube amps, sort of...
That has changed. In a class D amp, its possible to design the circuit such that the major non-linearities that cause distortion tend to make lower ordered harmonics, just like in tube amps.
I'm not saying this is true of all class D amps. I am saying that I've seen it, heard it and measured it in some.
I've been hearing about the demise of tubes since the 1960s. Like all tech though, tubes have a rise and they will have a fall. Right now things are looking a bit dark- 20 years ago the Tesla plant got bombed; the war in Ukraine hasn't helped at all; a fire that destroyed a plant in China didn't either since its apparently not getting rebuilt, but on top of that, class D is invading the guitar world in a way that it was not even 5 years ago. That's because most guitar players these days use effect pedals to get their 'sound' whereas 40 years ago they relied on the tube amp for that.
So now for a guitar player all they really need is a simple class D amp that doesn't sound harsh, and possibly with a 12AX7 input. Those amps already exist and weigh 15 pounds instead of 85 for the same power. In ten years there will be a lot more of them.
Whether we like it or not, tube production is still going on because of the guitar market, not the hifi market (at least as far as the major producers like JJ are concerned). As the guitar market dwindles, we may well see the major players get out of the market.
Add to that, there are people like me that make tube amps that openly admit that class D allows for a better product. I don't miss the tube amps in my system at all.
So yeah, we've all heard it before, but just like the boy that cried wolf, eventually it happens.