I've seen Jason Gregory talk about per frame arenas in Game Engine Architecture as a fundamental piece of how the Naughty Dog engines tend to work.

Totally agreed that they aren't required for shipping great console games (and they're really hard to use effectively in C++ since you're pretty much guaranteed to have hanging references if you don't have ascetic levels of discipline). This is mainly just meant as a "here's an example of how they can be used and are by at least one shop".