Not to mention that the large majority of current day DAW users are hobbyiests/semi-pros with home studios or small scale independent tracking studios with limited budgets. To the cost of the flagship PT release, all the Avid approved extras needed to perform tasks required in modern music production AND all the PT friendly hardware you could probably buy a nice car.
Is THAT version the "Best" DAW? IDK, because I've never used it and don't really have much interest in doing so but it is indeed the industry standard for now so it must have something going for it. I personally think it's just because it was the first widely used DAW so it took it's place in the educational institutions and big studios. If you are "pro" you are expected to know it so you can walk into any studio and just get to work. Kind of like a lot of spreadsheet and wordprocessing softwares or coding languages. There may be better alternatives that have certain advantages but for the sake of consistency and not having to have people take 10 college/uni courses instead of one or two the known and established software gets used.
CONFORM!!!
;-p
PS: If I did ever find myself in a position to drop the coin needed to buy the dream PT rig I'd probably spend it on Nuendo and a ton of cool gear instead... and copies of all the less expensive DAWs to just to play around with. I'd get far more bang for my buck(s) that way I think. Then if I wanted to use PT I'd just rent some studio time. AFAIK Reaper can basically be turned into a PT clone anyway.